


Same Weird Family - New Weird Timeline

by MyDarlingClementine



Series: Same Weird Family [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben is mentioned, Dysfunctional Hargreeves at their finest, Everyone Needs A Hug, Five eats a sandwich, Five gets an apology, Five is tired, Gen, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Swears, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Number five the boy gets a nap, Oops not anymore, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, Protective Klaus Hargreeves, Protective Number Five | The Boy, Team Zero (Umbrella Academy), diego has the braincell, dolores is a sassy sweetheart, for now, kindasorta, someone please just give all of them a hug, whumped up plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyDarlingClementine/pseuds/MyDarlingClementine
Summary: Five decided that it was one of those  “good news, bad news” situations.The good news was that the Hargreeves had made it back to 2019.The bad news was that their home was now the Sparrow Academy.The worst news was the strange way Reginald was staring at Five.---Starting where S2 ends, the siblings are stuck in the alternate version of 2019 where the Umbrella Academy doesn’t exist.Five is mostly trying to avoid dealing with the trauma of watching his siblings die (again) while doing his best to figure out how to get his family home.The others, well…at least they’re trying this time.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Luther Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Reginald Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Series: Same Weird Family [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064591
Comments: 174
Kudos: 852





	1. "Shit"

“Shit.”

Five gulped air. The word came out in a gasp, adrenaline surging through his veins at the shock of seeing the new “Number One.” 

Ben.

_That’s not Ben._

Looking around, Five saw all of his siblings sharing a collective double take at the clone of their dead brother standing in the Academy bar. He felt his own brain process the situation with frustrating slowness. They were all staring at Ben, but a distant part of Five’s mind registered that Reggie was still talking. _What is Dad saying, and -_ Five finally looked over his shoulder at Reginald and did his second double take in as many seconds, - _and why is he looking at_ me _like that?_

This was not good.

“Guys, let’s get out of here,” Five hissed at his siblings. Klaus was already walking back towards him, arms out in a protective stance. In another time and place, he might have found Klaus’s seemingly instinctual need to shield him from danger funny. The last time Five could remember Klaus actually protecting him was when they encountered an enormous spider when they were about four years old. Still, that meant Klaus was close enough to grab, so he would take it.

Diego had moved forward so that he was standing in front of the group, issuing a silent challenge to the newcomers. Luther looked like he was about to join him in starting a fight, but a word from Allison along with a hand on each of their arms stopped them. On the other side, Vanya had intuited Five’s plan, and stealthily put her hand on Five’s shoulder while linking Diego’s arm.

Teleporting out so soon after time traveling wasn’t ideal, but Five couldn’t see much that was about this situation. Not-Ben was responding to Diego’s unspoken challenge, his body in a loosely tense fighting crouch, inching towards them cautiously with a scowl on his face. Despite being on the balcony above, the rest of his team – the Sparrow Academy? – looked like they were poised for a fight.

And while the others were focused on the Sparrows, Five was still trying to keep one eye on Reginald. This was an older version of the man than he had ever known – a significantly older version than the one he had shared a drink with a few days ago in 1963. Five’s blood ran cold as the man who was not his father just kept… _staring_ at him.

He was too tired for this – they all were. They needed to escape.

Confirming that all of his siblings were linked together, and before anyone had time to change their mind, Five took a deep breath and reached out for the fabric of space. His fists, one grabbing Klaus and one still clutching the briefcase, emitting their familiar blue glow. Spatial jumps weren’t quite as nerve wracking as jumping through time – even as tired as he was, Five was reasonably sure he could keep them all together. The math was second nature to him - he just had to expand the equation for more mass. Still, he knew how much of a gut-wrenching ordeal jumping with seven – _no, no there were only six now_ he thought as a pang of loss hit him _–_ bodies was going to be.

Five set his jaw and gave a silent apology to his family as he ripped open space and threw them all into the blue light.

\---

They landed in a heap in the alley. Arms writhed and legs kicked as the siblings struggled to right themselves.

“Five, why do your powers always feel like I’m going through the spin cycle?” Klaus groaned, clutching his stomach. “Why dont we have any spatial jump antacids?”

“Ugh, I’m gonna puke,” Allison rolled over on the sidewalk and half on top of Vanya. 

“No time for that,” Diego was the first one up, having gracefully untangled himself from Luther’s massive limbs a second before. “We gotta get out of here,” Diego continued, scanning the alley.

Five didn’t disagree, but his world spun wildly when he moved his head, and he was having trouble untangling his own arms and legs. Not willing to let go of the briefcase, he forced a deep breath into his lungs, found his free arm, and pushed himself up onto his knees. He let out an involuntary groan as another wave of dizziness hit, followed by a shotgun blast of pain through his head.

“You alright, Fivey?” Klaus was suddenly in front of him, also still on his knees so he was at eye level. He reached out a hand to steady Five’s shoulder. Five hit it away, automatically but without malice. He just needed a moment. The repeated space and time jumps over the last couple of days had already worn his energy reserves thin, and the constant fighting had wreaked expected havoc on his body. Five was pretty sure that that last jump was solely fueled by adrenaline pumping through his veins, evidenced by his shaky limbs and the thundering heartbeat in his ears.

“Diego’s right,” he exhaled, forcing his legs beneath him and willing his feet to hold his weight. “We have to get away from the Academy.” Klaus had found his feet and stepped back, but was still close, like he half expected Five to collapse. 

“Where can we go?” Allison frowned. She and Vanya were still working together to get to their feet. “This is - I don’t – do any of us live here?”

“We could try the gym,” Diego suggested from his self-appointed spot at the front of the alley.

“Guys,” Klaus stepped forward, apparently satisfied that Five wasn’t going to topple over. It took a beat, as usual, for anyone to notice his outsized motions. “Guys, I know a place we can go!”

“Where?” replied Luther. He was last one to make it to his feet but had immediately started herding the group towards the street. Five was grateful for Luther’s sheepdog instincts. Despite the urgency he felt to get moving, Five still felt like each of his limbs held lead weights, and it was hard to move.

“Well, there was this lady I met in the 60s….and…she might have left her estate to me,” Klaus smiled and waggled his eyebrows. “For my, uh, eternal use…” 

Allison, Diego, and Luther frowned and shared a look. “In the 60s…” Allison began, with others chiming in. “Will that even work here? Aren’t we in a different timeline? How do we know?”

They all turned to their smallest brother, who had caught up to the group at the corner of the alley and was currently definitely-not-leaning against the brick wall for support.

Five frowned, almost grimacing, thinking over the question. “Five?” Allison prompted, as if it wasn’t obvious that they were looking to him for answers. He blinked, trying to clear the brain fog. Still lightheaded from the jump, his thoughts were spinning too fast. Deepening his frown and setting his jaw, he forced his brain to consider the temporal problem.

Five hadn’t spent enough time at headquarters to get a full understanding of how much the Commission knew about time and space, but he did know they were savvy enough to always get agents to the right timeline. That meant that someone at the Commission had at least a basic understanding of how to move from one timeline to another, and it was reasonable to suppose that the briefcases were programed for a certain timeline. 

If he was right, it was a “good news, bad news” situation. The good news was that this confirmed they were in the same timeline that they left in the 1960s. The bad news was that this meant they couldn’t use the briefcase to return to their own timeline. 

The worse news was that they were pretty famous by the time they left the 1960s, which would significantly limit their mobility in this timeline. Five shuddered at the thought of his face on a milk carton somewhere. 

_The worst news is that Dad knows we are here._ Five couldn’t shake the deep unease he felt at that prospect. But given how their interactions with Reginald had gone in 1963, he wasn’t in a hurry to bring up the subject with the others. This was something he was going to have to work out on his own.

He needed time to think, but that meant that they needed to get out of this alley.

“Yeah,” Five finally spoke out loud, pushing himself away from the wall and looking back up at his siblings. “That should work. When we used the briefcase to travel forward in time, it would have kept us in the same timeline.” Apparently the one where their father decided not to adopt them and chose a different set of children for his plans. He decided not to add that last part.

“Sweet!” Klaus clapped his hands. “I wonder if my stuff is still at the house?” He began skipping off down the street in what appeared to be a random direction.

“Hey, dumbass,” Diego called after Klaus, stopped next to a van that said _Ike’s Taxi Service._ “We’re not walking.”

Diego proceeded to break into the van, while Allison and Luther tried to avoid giving obviously worried glances at the few passerbys. Luckily, no one seemed to notice or care about the mismatched crew crowding around a taxi van. When the door finally popped open, they all silently piled in. Five knew he could have blinked in and unlocked the van faster, but reasoned it was good for Diego to achieve something. And if he was honest with himself, Five could really use a break from solving all their problems.

\---

Sitting in the van was the first time Five had stopped moving since 1963. So, naturally his headache took the opportunity to show its full force as the remainder of the adrenaline left his body. Exhaustion ripped through him in waves. A thirteen-year -old’s body could be pushed past the wall repeatedly, but the toll of constant action and lack of sleep and food had worn him thin. 

Still, Five had long since decided that body aches were ignorable, though the churning mess in his head was starting to not be. It wasn’t only the expected cotton-fuzz multiplying through each neuron in his skull from too many blinks and some time travel - which he had not yet even begun to process _,_ so add that to the mental to-do list - but there were fireworks blossoming from his right temple throughout his body, bringing waves of nausea along with the sharp pain. 

Swallowing down the feeling and wincing slightly, he brought his hand up to feel the bruise from whatever Lila had thrown at him – a frying pan? He added a probable concussion to his self-assessment. 

As they drove, he laughed silently at the irony of the situation. He had gotten what he wanted – his siblings were alive - _except Ben, well…our Ben_ \- but at what cost? Stuck in the 1960s, and then ripped away to a timeline where their lives didn’t exist.

Five had upended their lives. Again.

Not to mention all the various cuts and bruises and injuries they had all suffered. Diego being stuck in a mental institution. Luther making a living as a prize fighter. Klaus doing…whatever Klaus did with that cult. Allison and Vanya both finding families and then losing them because of him.

He certainly wouldn’t blame his family for hating him.

 _You’ve certainly caused a lot of havoc over the last few weeks,_ said the voice in his head that didn’t not sound like Dolores.

It was necessary, he thought back. We have to save the world. We have to save _them._

_And you will._

Five found familiarity of the voice as reassuring as the words. He closed his eyes and continued his attempts to wrangle the swirling thoughts. They had screwed up the timeline in 1963 after all, though not in the way that caused the nuclear holocaust. Still though, he told himself, they were _alive_ and that means he still could fix this.

He tried to consider what he knew and how he was going to find out what was wrong – why they ended up in this timeline. The math in the briefcases was inherently reliable, he had concluded, shoving down a pang of jealousy as he recalled the decades he had spent trying to work out the equations on his own. So he was reasonably sure what he told his siblings was correct - they should still be in the same timeline as they started from. He only needed to figure out the math to get them home. 

Five debated himself on whether he could summon the energy to raise a finger and start sketching calculations on the fogged glass.

 _Later,_ the voice said firmly. _You need rest. The_ almighty _math_ – Dolores had always referred to math in terms which were half reverent and half mocking – _it can wait._

Well, from what he knew so far, there wasn’t yet a timeframe for impending doom, so it was hard to summon enough energy to disagree with her.

Five slumped back against the window, more limply than he would have liked but he was working with a very limited set of resources at the moment. The cool of the window felt good against his head. Turning his thoughts to the current situation, he realized he didn’t ask where they were going. He was too tired to care as much as he probably should. As long as they were moving away, he reasoned there was probably little in this timeline that would cause an immediate obstacle.

How were they going to get home?

 _Later,_ the voice said firmly.

\----

Sitting in the back of the van, across from Five, Vanya tried to process how weird it felt to be back in 2019. Foreign, in a way she didn’t expect, with grey overtones of an aching loneliness that prevailed in her life before traveling to 1963. Despite her short time there, her life seemed more…vibrant than what she had left behind.

Vanya missed Sissy terribly. And Harlan.

And Ben.

She wasn’t ready for the flood of emotions that those memories threatened, so instead, Vanya studied her siblings. She could see the events of the day wear on each of them in turn. Diego was driving, constantly looking over his shoulder, suspicious of every car that passed. Klaus was up front, still chatting but oddly subdued, and giving directions to…somewhere. Allison and Luther, sitting in the middle seats, asking each other “what if” questions to which they had no answers.

And there was Five, who had climbed into the back with her and who was currently resting his head on the window. He hadn’t said a word since they got in the van. He hadn’t proposed or asked about a plan, but was just…sitting there, somehow simultaneously tense and slumped against the window, so lost in his own thoughts that he might have been sleeping with his eyes open.

“Five?” Vanya inquired softly, reaching out to her brother. He didn’t look at her, didn’t even hear her for all the reaction he gave. “Five?” she repeated a bit louder.

Five turned his head to look at her this time, a strange and very tired expression on his face. The events of the past days were outlined in a map across his face, with dark circles under his eyes matching the color of bruises forming along his throat and temples.

God, he looked like hell. 

Vanya realized that Five was looking her up and down, studying her much as she had been doing to him. His face scrunched up into a frown, but not an unfriendly one. “Are you ok, Vanya?” There was quiet sincerity in his voice.

Ha. What a question. Were any of them ok? She gave him a small, sad smile and a shrug. “Are you?” 

A hrmph and a half-hearted eye roll was all she got in response.

Ok, so he wasn’t up for talking. Being overly-prickly was par for the course with Five, so that alone didn’t mean much. But Vanya was getting vibes from him that she wasn’t sure how to interpret. Something wasn’t right. He was…worried about something. Something he hadn’t shared with them.

Studying Five more discreetly, Vanya could see the small stress cracks in his usually carefully composed demeanor – the set of his jaw, his heavily blinking eyelids, and the scrunch in his shoulders. The way he rested his head on the window.

Vanya wanted to ask another question, but she knew Five well enough to know that pushing him when he was in this state was the quickest way to accomplish absolutely nothing. Making a mental note to check on him later, Vanya sighed, closed her eyes, and resolved to be patient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm too impatient to wait for Season 3, so I started writing this. Will be some light speculation and plot, but also I wanted to fill insome of the S2 gaps and make the siblings come to terms with some things that they have been avoiding. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Comments welcome and much appreciated!


	2. Glassjaw Boxer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The combination of seeing his family safe and the copious drinks meant that for once Five wasn’t on a sharp razor’s edge. 
> 
> He might even be enjoying himself. 
> 
> Five thought perhaps this wasn’t going to be so bad.
> 
> Of course, he was wrong.

The shower was a luxury that Five deeply appreciated, turning up the water till the heat scorched his bruised and battered body. He frowned at invisible scars that were no longer there as well as the new ones that had appeared in the past weeks. The hot water lasted till his fatigue and pain turned to dizziness, and the combination threatened to put him on the floor.

 _Sit down before you fall down - you’ve gotten enough head lumps for one day,_ the voice chided _._

He was so tired. The thought was so frequent in Five’s brain that it had become a chant. The scant moments of sleep between crises over the last two weeks were catching up to him.

Five’s brain had been on overdrive since 1963 – the first time. Two weeks; two apocalypses, and two more times he witnessed his family die. He wasn’t ready to think about that – probably would never be, if he was being honest. And there had been no time to process…well, anything since the fight in the barn. Not while he was negotiating with Herb and then checking briefcases to ensure they had a way home, and certainly not since they had arrived here in this timeline.

So the memories got shoved into a neat little box like everything else. Shut below the icy surface where Five kept his more inconvenient emotions. He’d deal with them…sometime.

Five reviewed his growing mental to-do list as he absently got dressed in some clothes Klaus had rummaged for him. He needed to understand what went wrong – how the changes they had made had spiraled to create a different timeline. He needed to understand what the Sparrow Academy was and how much of a threat they posed. He needed to know why Reginald had given him such a calculated stare. And whether the Commission would still be a threat.

The list was endless.

After cleaning up, Five had intended to get to work, to start sketching out a framework to tackle the problems. But his thoughts were like molasses, shifting and sticking and sliding out of his grip. The headache combined with the retreating adrenaline and relaxation from the shower made it impossible to wrangle coherency out of the mess. 

He was so tired.

Five sat down on the bed and cradled his head in his hands.

His moping was interrupted by a knock at his door. “Five,” the knocker called. Allison. “Did you get cleaned up? We’ve got some food. Come down and eat?”

He lifted his head to stare at the door. His siblings. Add one more thing to the list. 

Sighing, Five weighed his options as Allison shuffled outside his door, waiting for his response. The practical part of his brain noted that food would help with the headache, and perhaps even the brain fog. Still though, his stomach curled at the idea of a family meal. Their last one had been an unmitigated disaster that ended with everyone covered in pineapple chunks.

The last family meal before that, Five had slammed his knife into the table and ran out the door of the Academy.

Other than the ill-fated family dinner with Reginald, Five wasn’t sure if his siblings had eaten together in 1963. He had certainly been too busy for anything but grabbing whatever was at hand from Elliot’s kitchen or occasionally from other convenient locations. Eating was necessary to replenish his energy, both physical and for his powers, but after decades of scavenging it wasn’t something he enjoyed. It was survival.

And then, at the Commission, meals were something to be endured. When as part of various missions, Five was forced to play a role as one person or another, to identify or mark or more rarely protect a target. By far the worst were the meals with the Handler, who had a fucking _weird_ fascination with food. He shuddered at those particularly repulsive memories.

Since he had been back, Five had avoided eating in front of his siblings as much as possible. 

_You’ve avoided_ eating _as well,_ the voice chimed in helpfully. Five scowled. Rebuking him for not eating was a _definite_ Dolores move. 

“Five?” Allison was becoming more insistent, and he knew she was going to try the doorknob in a few seconds. Locked, of course, but he knew she wouldn’t give up easily. He partially wanted to just ignore her, to wait till they all went to bed and then simply make himself a sandwich later. There was something comforting, familiar about that thought. Even as a kid he had more often than not fueled up on late night snacks and sandwiches to supplement the meals he forgot to eat or couldn’t because he was too nauseous from training.

 _Five, you should check on them,_ ok-fine-he-could-no-longer-pretend-it-wasn’t-Dolores said suddenly.

He considered that. Unsurprisingly, she was right. He _should_ check in on his family. Certainly they had all had a rough few days.

_Understatement of the year, dear._

And, in a stroke of luck, his family had finally, _finally_ shown some ability to stick together in 1963. In pairs and small groups at first, but then as a group all piling into the station wagon to follow Vanya out to the farm. Five smiled at the memory of that car ride. 

It was decided. He was tired, but he was also stubborn, and he needed to be sure that the little bonds that had been reforming among various family members over the past few weeks weren’t unraveling. If it meant that he had to pick himself through a meal and a conversation with his siblings, well he could do that.

Probably.

Besides, he _definitely_ needed to check on Vanya. She had been looking at him very oddly during the van ride earlier, almost as if she was sizing him up for some reason. And while he hadn’t yet seen any outward signs of her losing control, she had been through a lot and Vanya could be fragile.

Fragile like a bomb. 

“ _…unless we take her with us and fix her.”_ His words rang in his head. When had he spoken them? A day and a week and a lifetime ago.

He needed to assess what her time in the 60s had done to Vanya. Five had been so overwhelmed dealing with…well, everything, that he hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her as he wanted. But even he could see that Vanya had formed a deep connection with Sissy and Harlan.

Who she then had to leave behind.

A deep pang of empathy rang through Five’s bones. Though the practical part of him knew they could never have stayed in the 1960s, he also knew practical facts did exactly shit to soften the agony of being ripped away from those you loved.

He was suddenly desperate to check on Vanya. Standing up, he walked to the door and quickly opened it. Nodding to a surprised Allison, he started down the hall.

Yes, this was the right move, he decided. Food would be good for him, and he could check on Vanya. And the others.

That should satisfy you, yes? He directed that thought at the voice in his head.

The silence confirmed that Dolores approved.

\----

The mood downstairs was surprisingly lighthearted, given all that had transpired over the last few days. Luther was exploring Klaus’ benefactor’s extensive record collection and playing a curated selection of upbeat music. Klaus was dancing around the rug with Vanya, each of them swaying to a different interpretation of the beat. Five snuck an appraising glance at each of them and was heartened to see signs of actual enjoyment from both siblings.

Diego and Allison were discussing how to scrape together dinner from the limited canned and dried goods in the pantry. Five walked past that last pair smoothly, definitely not wanting to be part of that effort. Despite having by far the most experience surviving on non-perishable foods, it had been decades since Five had prioritized a meal as being more than the nutrients it could give him. Instead, he went over to the obviously already raided liquor cabinet, grabbed the first bottle that didn’t seem to be weirdly fru-fru and sat down on the couch, content to let the others dance and talk.

Like any good survivor, Five had long since honed his ability to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. As a child, he had always hated anything that dulled his wits and concentration, and though he had tried drinking a few times with Klaus, that was mainly for solidarity with his brother. But as the years passed and childhood transformed into young and then just regular adulthood living in the apocalyptic wasteland, and as his hope for finding a way back became ever more distant, well, even he could admit that somewhere along the way survival became a grind.

And really, that was ok – Five was made to grind, to throw himself at a problem and through either brains or sheer stubbornness wear it down until it yielded an answer. But the isolation and the never-ending stress had still worn at him, and he had turned to more and more dangerous activities as outlets for the feelings he didn’t know how to express. One of his closest and almost certainly the most avoidable of all of his brushes with death was during his early twenties, when he climbed down into a buried basement vault in the remnants of a fallen skyscraper. Five’s hobbies always had a purpose, so of course he was ostensibly looking for supplies. It had taken decades for him to somewhat sheepishly admit that at least half of his motivation had been the thrill of danger.

And when the wall collapsed and he fell into the darkness…well, he had been able to blink away, but it was a close thing.

After that, Dolores had redoubled her efforts to bash some sense into him. _If you kill yourself falling into a basement,_ she scolded him, _who is going to save the world? If you die – this_ – her arm waved around to indicate the rubble filled landscape - _is **permanent.** Your siblings will be dead, **forever.**_

So Five had given up the more dangerous expeditions and buried his feelings in alcohol instead. Despite the fact that it made him surly, and that Dolores was less likely to talk to him while he drank.

And sometimes, well sometimes it was enough to dull the demons screaming inside his head. Sometimes it was enough that he could _forget._

He had known it for the false comfort it was. But it was all he had, and Five had always been one to make do.

\---

Dinner had been decided and soon enough, they were all sitting at the table with plates of noodles and sauce in front of them. Luther had decided on some dinner music that was vaguely familiar and pleasant. Otherwise, for the first few minutes there was only the sound of silverware and plates scraping, mild shuffling, and muffled chewing.

Sitting with his family while they ate gave Five a chance to study them in what he hoped was an inconspicuous manner. He reveled, a bit dizzily, in seeing them all together. Vanya particularly seemed to be more at ease around the family, laughing and talking with Allison and Klaus. She tried to catch his eye a few times, but Five ducked the invitation and she didn’t press it. 

Eating at a table together made him nostalgic for childhood. The droning of the conversation which had picked up again was a warmer, more fuzzy background noise than their father’s endless instruction tapes.

Five smiled to himself, almost forgetting how much his head hurt. He didn’t exactly relax, but between the sight of his family and the alcohol –

_And the concussion – you really shouldn’t drink so much, Five._

Shut up shut up shut up, he fired back. He immediately regretted the harshness in his tone.

Well, in any case, the combination of seeing his family and the copious drinks meant that for once Five wasn’t on a sharp razor’s edge.

He might even be enjoying himself.

Five thought to himself that perhaps this wasn’t going to be so bad.

Of course, he was wrong. 

“Five, you’re not eating.” The first shot came from Luther. Instinctively, Five’s walls slammed up and he shot his brother a withering glare. So much for relaxation.

“Yes, I am,” Five countered, possibly a bit childishly. Staring down at his plate, he stabbed a piece of pasta with his fork. He put it in his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed, all the while keeping up the glare that he hoped would dispel any more questions.

“Five, you need to eat more than that,” Allison pointed out when he put his fork down. Conversation had paused and now _everyone_ was looking at him.

Five’s head started to hurt again. 

“Allison, stop mothering me.” Petulance threatened to leak into his voice. “I’m not a child.” He succeeded in getting the words out in a flat tone despite the storm building up inside him. How many grown adults were asked whether they were _eating?_

“Yeah, yeah we know, you’re fifty-eight years old.” Luther said. “You still have to eat.”

“Hey, who’s up for checking out the pool after dinner?” Klaus turned the conversation effortlessly, and Five threw him a silent cheer of gratitude.

“Oh, yeah!” Allison lit up at the idea, but her face quickly scrunched up. “But it’s probably pretty gross – no one lives here. Does it even have water in it after all this time?”

“There’s a caretaker,” Klaus produced a crumpled business card from some unknown pocket. “I found their card. Full-service establishment, baby, Food, linens, dusting, pool – everything!”

“We don’t have any suits,” Luther complained.

“That didn’t stop Allison last time,” Klaus winked at his sister. Luther eyes widened and he stared at Klaus, and then Allison.

“I was still wearing a dress, Klaus,” Allison rolled her eyes at her brother. “I was so happy to see you and I must have lost my mind.”

“I could go for a swim - ” Vanya’s sentence was cut off by a yawn. “But maybe tomorrow. This,” she gestured at her half-empty wine glass and fully empty plate of pasta,” is making me pretty sleepy.

“Carbs are heaven,” Klaus agreed, waving his fork. “What’s for dessert?”

\---

Dinner wound down without further confrontation. Five managed to eat what he judged was a reasonable amount of food, and thankfully, his siblings refrained from further commentary on the subject. After the table was cleared, everyone sprawled around the living room, energy levels fading quickly. Everyone had turned the corner from adrenaline-fueled action to exhausted giddiness hours ago, and then showers, clean clothes and food had lulled everyone into a sense of normalcy.

Satisfied that he had seen no signs of emotional distress from Vanya, Five once again tried to follow Dolores’s instructions to relax. But his mind kept reworking the problems to which there were no answers.

Sitting on the couch next to him, Diego had apparently picked up on Five’s increasingly pensive mood because he leaned over towards his smallest brother, and with what was clearly a forced air of nonchalance asked, “You good, Five?” Subtlety was never Diego’s strong suit. 

Five sighed. “I’m fine, Diego,” he said flatly, gulping a large swig of his drink to steel himself for the inevitable pointless conversation. And Five really was _fine,_ well at least fine enough. He was floating on the far side of tipsy from the alcohol, he had a lot of complex feelings about the dinner, his head hurt, his patience was thin, and he didn’t have any answers.

None of which he needed to explain to _Diego._

“Hey, you want me to take a look at those bruises? They look pretty nasty.” Diego gestured at the darkening marks on Five’s throat and face. 

“Nope,” Five scowled, his hand automatically coming up to touch the injuries. “Not necessary.”

“Oh, come on, Five. You know the drill. Post mission health checks, and all that. Dad always made us do them.”

Five snorted and raised an eyebrow incredulously. “You of all people are going to bring _Dad_ into this?”

“Five, come on. Be reasonable. You really should let someone check you.” Great, now Allison was in on it. “A concussion or something could be pretty serious at your age.”

At your age.

At _his_ age.

Five slammed his drink on the table, causing everyone to jump.

He wanted to scream.

No matter how many times he told them, no matter how many things he had done for them, his family still saw him as a child. Frustration and anxiety spiraled inside him, outsized emotions that were now leaking out of the box, its lock worn down from exhaustion and the alcohol and the odd normalcy of the evening.

He knew Dolores would tell him to be charitable – that it had been a long day for everyone. That Diego and Allison _caring_ about Five’s well-being was probably a good thing. But the petulant part of him was too tired to listen. He had survived for decades on his own. He had done terrible things that they couldn’t even imagine. He had given everything he had over and over again to keep them alive. Yet his siblings still harped on him like he was thirteen.

If they only knew.

_Maybe you should tell them._

Five barked out a laugh, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. He felt worlds away from his family though in reality they were close enough for him to reach out and touch them if he wanted to. He didn’t. The gulf between them had widened until it was endless, and panicky guilt rose like bile in Five’s throat. 

He had been so close to losing them again in Dallas. Losing everything.

He tasted the tang of madness and despair.

It was suddenly hard to breathe. The room was too hot and too loud. Looking up, Five could see the eyes of each of his siblings staring at him.

No one was moving. Corpses never moved. 

Coming down for dinner had been a mistake.

The need to escape was suddenly overpowering. Without a word or warning, Five blinked upstairs. He landed in his room, stumbling a bit as his legs tried to adjust for moving from a sitting position to holding him upright. The pain in his head intensified from the jump, but it was a familiar pain. Something he knew how to deal with.

Versus his impossible siblings.

Five sighed and resumed his earlier search for paper and pencils. Time to get working, he told himself resolutely, trying to retool his mind towards something useful.

 _You need to rest_. Dolores’s tone was insistent.

No. Five could be just as stubborn.

_Five, you’re exhausted. Beyond exhausted._

I’m fine. The lie sounded hollow even as he said it.

 _You’re afraid of what will happen if you stop. If you rest._

The rebuke was gentle, but Five still didn’t think it was fair. She knew of the nightmares. The void that was empty yet filled with ghosts of his siblings that chased him and screamed until he couldn’t differentiate their screams from his own. The place that was cold and hot and empty and loud all at once. Where he felt like he was drowning endlessly, choking on his own breath.

Five didn’t want to close his eyes and go back to that hellish place. 

_Hell isn’t a place you go, my love. It’s what you bring with you,_ Dolores said, her voice a gentle whisper.

Five knew she was right, but he scowled at her anyway. Still, he gave up his search for pen and paper and sat down on the bed.

Gods, he was tired.

For the second time that night, Five sighed and cradled his head in his hands.

And that’s when his siblings, every last one of them, barged into his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Five...I'm sorry :(
> 
> One of my favorite parts of UA is how they combine the show with amazing music, so I've tried to do the same with my chapter titles. "Glassjaw Boxer" is from the 2007 song/album of the same name by Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers


	3. Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Fivey, what’s the matter?” Did we die again and no one told us?” Klaus’s joked.
> 
> “Yes.” No one had expected him to answer. Certainly no one had expected that answer. 
> 
> “Um, Five,” Klaus said softly, reaching a hand towards his brother. “We are most definitely not dead. I promise that I will tell you when we are dead. Pinky swear.”

Of course, Luther was the first in the door. Despite it being locked. Locks don’t stop someone with super strength.

Five’s head shot up. He stood up so fast that the room spun. Ignoring the dizziness, he stepped forward to meet his siblings head on. Every wall he had and a few more for good measure had slammed up at the moment of the interruption. “Doesn’t anybody knock?” he growled.

Luther stood a few feet from Five, flanked by Diego and Allison. Classic Umbrella Academy formation. Klaus and Vanya brought up the rear, and crowded in the doorframe, as if they were more uncertain about what was about to happen. 

“Five! You’ve got to stop doing this.” Luther was using his serious Number One voice. 

Five feigned innocence. “And I’m supposedly doing…what, exactly?” He wasn’t sure what specific thing Luther was referring to, but it wasn’t hard to infer the broad strokes of the accusation. 

“You can’t just…” Luther waved his arms for emphasis, frustration evident on his face. “…up and jump away anytime you’re pissed at us. You need to talk to us.” 

Well, then. Five thought about simply blinking away again, which would not only allow him to escape, but have the delicious benefit of making Luther's statement incredibly ironic. Unfortunately, standing up had made him almost overwhelmingly dizzy. Likely the combination of alcohol and concussion that Dolores had warned him about.

As it was taking everything he had to not sway on his feet as he stared down the five interlopers, stalling seemed as good of a tactic as any. Five cocked his head, hoping that the movement wouldn’t make the world spin any faster. “And what, pray tell, do we have to talk about, Luther?”

“We want to know what’s wrong.” That volley came from the side. Allison. The timing was impeccable, like it had been rehearsed. Five supposed it was. He turned slightly to face the new opponent, thankful that the world lurched only slightly this time. “You’ve been acting weird ever since we left Dallas.”

Oh good. Another variation of _this_ pointless conversation. Five couldn’t stop his lip from curling up in disgust. “I’m not acting _weird_.”

 _They’re not attacking you, Five. You don’t have to fight them._

Five ignored her.

“You barely ate anything at dinner,” Allison shot back. “And you’ve been downing whiskey like it’s going out of style.” 

Five rolled his eyes, but still gave a halfhearted attempt to speak in a measured tone. “So what? You don’t get to police my drinking. And I’m not hungry. If I am, I’ll eat a sandwich later. I’m _fine._ ” 

“Yeah, you look like it,” Diego scoffed. Five had expected that. Standard Numbers-One-through-Three-trifecta attack.

“Five, we all got the crap kicked out of us yesterday – today – whenever it was.” Time travel made things like measuring days complicated. “But _you_ look like you’ve been through a war. From what I can see you’ve got a huge lump on your head, and from the looks of it you were nearly strangled. I don’t know what else because you won’t let me get close enough. We’re a team, remember?”

Five made a scoffing noise and rolled his eyes again.

“And it’s not just tonight.” Diego turned to the room for concurrence “You’ve been stomping around like an old man ever since you got back, and you run away whenever anyone tries to talk to you.”

Five threw up his hands in exasperation. So what. None of those things mattered. “Maybe I run away, _Diego_ , because conversations with any of you are pointless.”

He looked around, ensuring that they knew the next statement was addressed to all of them. “And I am an old man. How many times do I have to explain it? _I may look thirteen, but I’m significantly older than all of you._ ” By now, Five wasn’t even bothering to try to keep contempt from dripping off every word.

In frustration, he tried to jam his fists into his pockets, only to realize in dismay that his current outfit was pocket-free. _Who the hell makes freaking pants without freaking pockets?!?_ The small injustice only fueled his anger, as he once again seriously considered ending this by simply blinking away. His fingers tingled and ached with the desire to be _anywhere_ but here. Fuck the inevitable headache. Being hit with a frying pan again might be preferable to this conversation.

But the house was only so big, and Five understood the undercurrent in the room well enough to know that his siblings weren’t going to give up easily tonight. He guessed they might simply follow him from room to room, waiting for him to wear himself out.

And despite the untenableness of the current situation, until they were able to learn more about their surroundings and this timeline, Five wasn’t willing to consider the idea of going anywhere else and actually _leaving_ his siblings on their own.

 _Stop fighting, Five. Talk to them,_ Dolores pleaded _._

Again, he ignored her.

Ok, so other than blinking, Five decided the next most tenable strategy was to simply out-glare his siblings. He was a patient man. They had to give up eventually. 

Vanya stepped forward, flanked by Klaus, and spoke in a soft tone. “Five, we just want to know what’s wrong,” Some part of Five knew it wasn’t an attack. Unfortunate timing. He had just pot committed to the strategy of glaring. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he snarled. “As we’ve already discussed, _ad nauseum,_ I’m fine.”

 _That’s debatable, dear._ Dolores’s voice was getting louder and harder to ignore.

Five threw back his head in frustration. _Really?_ He expanded his glare to encompass Dolores. _Now I have to fight you as well? And why are you all so fixated on an arbitrary definition of_ fine _? It doesn’t matter if I’m fine. As long as I’m_ … _effective._

_Pedantics, Five. You’re half-drunk and you’re being surly._

Five scoffed. It didn’t matter. He’d do what needed to be done. He always had. He always would.

After decades in each other’s pockets, any fight with Dolores felt like retreading long worn ruts down familiar paths. Still, he hated arguing with her. So he intentionally slowed his breathing, clenching and unclenching his fists to subside the twitch in his fingers. The efforts gained him a measure of control, which he knew he would need to deal with his siblings. They really were uncharacteristically relentless tonight and he wasn’t quite sure why.

Luther attempted once again to regain the initiative. “Five, you’re…a bit of a mess. You’ve been squirrely since, well since Dad’s dinner. Probably even before that,” he amended. “You’re either running around raving and threatening, or you sit there and barely say a word. I don’t know even know what to do with you right now.” 

_Squirrely?_

Five choked, focused on that word. His feeble attempts at control were lost to indignation. He heard himself spit out a noise that could have been a laugh if it was more pleasant. “You think I’ve been _squirrely?_ Well, maybe I’m like this because when I asked you for help, you threw me off a balcony, _Number One_.”

His mouth twitched up in a snarl without conscious effort. Luther wasn’t going to hold back, so neither was he. “ _Maybe,_ it’s because when I asked you for help again, you _conspired to murder me!”_

Five’s blow hit as squarely as a kick in the balls. “And just to be clear, you don’t have to do anything with me. Ever.” He crossed his arms and resumed glaring, no longer caring if he looked petulant.

Luther visibly retreated, his eyes lowering. _One down._

He opened his mouth to speak, but Allison was quicker. “Luther, what is he talking about?” Now everyone was staring at Luther, who was squirming under their gaze. 

“I, uh…” Luther threw up his hands, acquiescing all sense of authority. “Look, it was a mistake.”

“You tried to murder Five, and you call it _a mistake_?” Disdain and anger fought for dominance in Allison’s voice.

 _I’m sorry, buddy._ Luther’s words from the day in question rang in Five’s ears as he and Allison continued arguing.

 _Two down._

Five was expecting the next attack to again come from his flank. But what he didn’t expect was its nature - a verbal knife that slipped right through his walls and embedded itself in his soft core.

“Five, what happened in the barn?” Diego asked. Five turned to stare at him. For a moment, time stood still.

_Fuck._

Five blinked, his mouth hanging open, frozen by the words. The attack had been calculated, precise. Diego had used the distraction caused by the others’ argument to blindside his opponent. 

Apparently, Five had underestimated Diego’s powers of deduction. Possibly due to the man’s inane obsession with JFK.

But that…distraction aside, Diego was a skilled vigilante and combat operator. Which means he noticed things.

_Fuck._

Five felt himself shatter. Diego’s words were a hot twisting knife in his gut.

It just wasn’t _fair_. He wasn’t ready to talk about this. Wasn’t ready to relive their deaths _again._ He was _trying._ It had taken all of his control that night to pick his way through a conversation about goddamn _food._ He was tired and sore and his head was spinning and all he wanted to do was find a safe corner to curl up and sleep. Why was that too much to ask?

Five hadn’t really planned to tell anyone about what happened in the barn. And he hadn’t exactly planned not to. There simply hadn’t been enough time for him to process…anything yet. Either way, he certainly wasn’t ready to have this conversation.

He had been gambling on the idea that everybody had been so distracted by Lila and Diego and then the bad guys with guns that no one had noticed his sudden move to the door. Or they would have just attribute it to a normal blink.

Apparently, his luck had run out. 

Goddamn Diego.

The more observant of his siblings saw the emotions fly wildly across Five’s face, too fast to pick up on any single one. But all of them noticed how his fists clenched, and his posture somehow took on even more tension, to the point where he noticeably trembled for a moment before clamping down on that weakness.

Klaus made himself heard from the corner. “Um guys, maybe we should leave Five alone. He looks like he’s about to…go explode-y, or something.” In a distant part of Five’s brain, Klaus’s measure notched up again.

But Five and Diego both knew that Diego had him on the hook. And he wasn’t going to let go easily. “What happened in the barn? You were behind Lila, and you looked…freaking feral, man. I thought I was going to have to stop you from sinking your claws into her.”

Lila. Five’s eyes narrowed as he mouthed the name. In some weird way, he had liked Lila. Fighting with Lila was _exciting._ He had never had the opportunity to fight someone with his own capabilities before. And Lila was _good._

But Five was better. 

What he had told Luther had been the truth - for all his years as an assassin, he had never come to enjoy killing. On the other hand, he had always enjoyed physical combat, the thrill that came from throwing his body and mind against an enemy and wearing then down, whether by strength or tricks or sheer willpower. During Umbrella Academy training, Five had relished the chance to spar against his bigger and stronger brothers. Even when his father’s handicapping had prevented them from using their powers, his combination of cunning and speed had allowed him to match with them more often than not.

There had been little opportunity for opponents in the apocalypse. Or afterward. Five had almost forgotten how exhilarating sparring could be. Until he met Lila.

“– And then suddenly you were behind me – over by the door.” Diego’s _stupid_ voice interrupted his thoughts, bringing Five back to _stupid_ reality.

A half-truth was worth a shot. “So what? In case you forgot, Diego,” Five explained slowly, trying to muster authority by speaking as one would to an unruly child, “blinking from one place to another is _literally my power.”_

“Yeah, but _why?”_ By this time Diego’s voice had risen so the question was almost a shout. He took a step forward. Five stood still, practically defenseless in his shattered state, but still unwilling to give ground. The others were silent spectators, frozen by the sudden intensity of the conflict.

“Why did you blink behind _me,_ when you thought _Lila_ was the threat?”

To everyone’s surprise, including his own, Five laughed.

The sound that squeezed out of him wasn’t pleasant.

It sounded like the laugh of a madman.

_Why?_

_You ask me why?_

_To save your dumb asses, that’s why._

The words tumbled through Five’s head, thoughts crashing into each other like waves.

_I watched the life ripped out of you one by one in a shower of bullets._

_I heard the silence when you all stopped breathing._

_I did the only thing I could, even though I didn’t know how to do it until I did._

The laugh hiccupped into a broken sound.

_And yes it’s made me squirrely and everything hurts right now, but I’ve just been trying to survive._

_And to keep you alive._

He felt the cold planks of the barn floor. 

_Isn’t that enough for you?_

The scratch of hay under his back. 

_I’m giving you everything I know how to._

The bodies tumbled around him.

_Why isn’t it enough?_

Five sank heavily on the bed, defeated by his memories.

It had all happened so fast. He hadn’t realized he was falling until he hit the ground. His breath had flown out of him and he couldn’t draw it back in. Time had swirled maddeningly. The pain was an unnervingly distant thing. He had felt the red claw at the edges of his vision, tasted the coppery finality of death in his mouth.

And _she_ had been there – the Handler. Her cruel face ever mocking him.

Shame wallowed up in Five’s throat. She had played him – played his own stupid pride and overconfidence. He should have _known_ that she was setting him up. He was just too consumed by the need to get home, and too _distracted_ by his family’s inability to just fucking listen.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Five had been the frog.

She was always the scorpion. 

It’s not that Five was sorry for what he’d done as part of the Handler’s deal. He wasn’t. _If anyone, anywhere deserved to die, it was those Commission fuckers._ _Playing us all for puppets, killing billions of people to keep their precious timeline intact_.

No, Five had zero regrets about killing the members of the Commission Board.

He did have some about how fantastically…alive his body felt as he used the axe to cleave the life from theirs. How quickly he had let go of all pretense of control. How completely the monster had overtaken him and turned the act into something…darker.

But at the time it had felt so good. Cathartic.

He had so desperately needed the release.

Mostly Five’s regrets were about being a pawn. Bringing the danger of the Commission to bear on his own family.

They had paid the price for his pride.

So had Elliot. 

Five had more complicated regrets about not understanding the importance of Reginald’s words sooner. That it had taken lying on a cold barn floor staring down the barrel of a gun for him to understand.

The Handler, then the Swede – it hadn’t mattered. He was dead anyway.

Shame at his impotence had spooled around in his head, swirled with terror about losing everything again, and threaded with his father’s mocking advice ringing in his ears. The _I told you so_ that never came. The unspoken words threatened to drown him with their heaviness.

So he did the unthinkable. He turned back time.

And in the end, it had been enough.

This time.

A distracting thought tickled the back of Five’s mind, pulling him back from his memories. The words his father had spoken…Five tried to piece them together. _You’re meant to save the world…band together…seconds, not decades._

Could this…all of it…have been part of Dad’s plan?

Five forced himself to consider the possibility.

Their father, who had always trained them to fight against the apocalypse.

Who had killed himself the week before it happened.

Who had just so happened to be in Dallas in 1963.

Who was a member of the Majestic 12.

Who had given Five just little enough to ensure that he took the Handler’s deal. 

That would mean….Five’s stomach dropped as the pieces came together in his mind.

Reginald Hargreeves _was_ truly aware of the apocalypse. How, he didn’t know. But Five was now certain of it.

There was more.

It would mean that this timeline’s version of Reginald Hargreeves was aware of the _Commission_.

The potential implications spiraled endlessly out from that thought. Five felt a cold shiver run through his bones.

Still, he knew it wasn’t quite right yet. He was missing something. The pieces fit, but not neatly. Only if he kluged them together. 

_What was he missing?_

_\---_

“FIVE!”

The shout cleaved him violently from his thoughts.

Five blinked, confused, and looked up. His mind registered that his name had possibly been said more than once. 

Oh, he remembered, almost absently. His siblings were pestering him. 

Five sighed. All of the energy that had once fueled his rage was gone, drained away as quickly as it had spiraled up. Anger merely simmered now, rather than burned. He no longer felt dizzy, just…tired.

In the clarity of hindsight, Five knew he hadn’t ever really been angry at his siblings. Annoyed, sure. Frustrated.

But anger was reserved for the fact that Luther and Diego’s questions dragged things out of the little box, things that snagged and pulled at the cracks and exposed his weakness. For the memory of the light fading out of Klaus’s eyes, reaching for Five but still dead before he hit the ground. For the way that Vanya’s body crumpled like a discarded paper doll.

Mostly, Five’s anger was directed at himself. For being played, and not figuring out the only possible end to the Handler’s deal until it was much too late. If he had been thinking _clearly._

If he only…

_Stop, Five. There’s no good destination down that road._

A sudden wave of exhaustion hit him, filling in the void left by the retreating anger. It must have been well after midnight now and he hadn’t slept well for days.

He needed sleep. And time to process.

But he was also now keenly aware that the others needed something from him. Something more than petty bickering. That’s what had brought them here. Looking around at his siblings, he now saw they shared the same circles under their eyes. They leaned on each other for support, all of them miles past exhaustion.

Five could clearly see a _need_ reflected in each of his siblings’ eyes. Had it been there this whole time?

Probably. He had missed it, blinded by anger and the alcohol. Missed that they needed something enough that they were willing to fight for it. Willing to fight _him_ for it.

 _Well, at least they’re working together._ The corners of Five’s mouth turned up at that balmy thought, which bridged some of the gulf between him and his siblings. Who he realized were now looking back and forth to one another, clearly not sure what to do next. He guessed they were probably waiting for him to say something.

He had no idea where to begin. 

“Fivey, what’s the matter?” Did we die again and no one told us?” Klaus’s joke broke the untenable silence in the room.

Five blinked in surprise. For not the first time, he wondered if Klaus was aware of how good his intuition really was. The Séance may have appeared to float around aimlessly but he had a knack for picking up on the invisible threads around him.

_Talk to them._

Frustration and anger and fear threatened to rise up again. He swallowed it all down.

 _You can do this_.

“Yes.” Five did enjoy watching his siblings do their second collective double take of the day. Perhaps no one had expected him to answer. Definitely no one had expected _that_ answer.

Klaus’s mouth fell open in shock. Whatever he was going to say next died on his lips.

“Klaus got it in one. You all died. Again.” The words came out haltingly at first, and then faster as Five plowed on. “ _We_ all died. Because _I_ screwed up.”

Klaus and Diego shared a glance, then aimed puzzled looks at Five. “Um, Five,” Klaus said softly, reaching a hand towards his brother. “We are most definitely not dead. I promise that I will tell you when we are dead. Pinky swear.” He curled his finger up in the gesture, a sad smile on his lips.

Five scoffed. He jumped up from the bed and began pacing around the room, weaving in between the others as he spoke, trying to distract his body with movement so his mind could focus on the words. “No, you moron. We aren’t dead now. But we _were –_ or at least you were.”

He stopped, grimacing at the unpleasant words. “Because I messed up again. I didn’t see through the Handler’s tricks - _again_.” His ears burned and his cheeks flushed with shame. What an idiot he was. After everything he’d done, he still couldn’t protect his family. 

“She shot us down, every one of us. Including Lila. Including _me._ ” That came out more choked than he intended.

“But, in the barn. You got the jump on her. I saw you - ” Luther began, but the wheels in Diego’s head were turning faster.

“You time traveled again!” Diego interrupted, still the current owner of the shared brain cell.

“Yes, congratulations, Diego,” Five's snark was dry but halfhearted. “Apparently deduction is a skill you can learn as an adult. As you should remember, time travel is _also literally my power.”_

“But how did you know it would work?” Luther furrowed his brow in confusion. “That you would stay in the barn? The last time you tried to time travel, we ended up in Dallas!”

Five sighed and resumed pacing. He ached with the uncomfortableness of explaining. “That was different. Time traveling in a hurry with six people -” he threw a pointed look at Klaus, who shot back a guilty glance, followed by an apologetic smile and a shrug. Five wasn’t quite sure why Klaus had lied about Ben coming with them to 1963, and he hadn’t yet found time to ask him. One more thing for the list.

“ – is a lot. It was a desperation move. I was focusing on keeping all of you with me, _and intact_ , and I was doing it in a rush because - if you recall - _the world was ending_.” Five didn’t know why he was once again explaining this, and it was making Vanya look like she was going to cry, so he pressed on quickly. “I didn’t mean to bring us to Dallas. So once again, and can we please for the love of the almighty consider this my last word on the subject - _I am sorry about that.”_

He took a breath. Thinking he was done, Allison made to respond, but Five gave her a shooeing motion with his arm, not even bothering to look back at her. He couldn’t afford any more interruptions. The sooner he got the words out, the sooner their curiosity would be satisfied. Maybe then they would shut up and leave him alone.

Maybe Dolores would stop nagging him as well.

_You’re doing well, Five. Keep going._

“This time I did something else new.” Five’s pacing had contracted to small circles, his hands absently pulling at his hair. “I didn’t even know I could do it until I did. Until I remembered what Dad said – what he told me after dinner that night. It was the secret to time travel. Or, it was at least the clue I needed,” he amended, deflating somewhat. He looked down at the ground, shaking his head in frustration. “It was so damn obvious. How to save myself. To save us.”

Five stopped pacing and looked up at his siblings. His eyes were bright, almost pleading. He felt a sudden desperate need for them to understand. “We were all dead, don’t you see? Why not try something crazy? So I turned back time _just for me.”_

“That’s how I knew the Handler was going to come through the door. And that’s how I got the jump on her.” _Fuck you -_ he smiled at the memory of her being gunned down by the Swede – _and rot in hell_.

Silence now filled the room. Five looked around at each of his siblings, searching their faces one by one. Diego’s face wore a shifting series of frowns as he clearly worked through the details of Five’s confession. Klaus was staring into the corner, his hands cradling the dog tags he wore around his neck. Luther and Allison looked back and forth between each other and him, confusion and pity in their eyes. Vanya just stared at him, sadly.

Five started pacing again. They didn't understand. How could they? The combined weight of their gaze was crushing. His thoughts were again crashing waves, too loud against the silence and threatening to drown him. He had played his hand and now had where else to go. No escape, not from his thoughts and not from their stares.

He should have expected this. Telling them had changed nothing. They couldn’t understand that his mind was filled with burning ash. That he would forever carry their ghosts. And while those particular burdens hadn’t gotten easier over the last forty-five years, they had at least become familiar.

Now they were like new again. Heavier, with sharp, jagged edges. 

It was far, far too much to contain in his neat little box.

“Five?”

The word was almost a whisper, but it cut through the silence like a shout.

“Five,” the voice repeated softly. It sounded not unlike Dolores when she was sad. “Are you ok?”

No.

He closed his eyes and shuddered.

He had told them what they wanted to know.

He had given them all the answers he had.

It still wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

He had nothing left. 

“Five, we just want to help you” the soft voice said. He still didn’t care to pick out its owner. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t bear to keep listening. His siblings had died because of him. Again. And everything that happened afterwards – his survival, his thoughts, his actions – he could give them everything and still would never be enough to make it up to them. Never. 

Two sets of siblings stared at him. Then three. Four. Live bodies and corpses blended together, shifting and making the room spin again. Five covered his eyes with his hands, but he could still see them staring. Pinning him under the crushing weight of their collective gaze. 

It was too much.

 _I’m sorry_. Five whispered the words as he blinked out.

His family stared at where their brother had stood only a moment before. This time they did not go after him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo....in my first few attempts to write this, Five's emotions were centered around anger. But at some point I had this crazy existential back and forth with the angry murder elderly teenager and found his emotions becoming much, much more complex. Five is a person who is (not) dealing with a deep and tangled web of pain and guilt and desperation, and so every time I rewrote this, I found that those emotions had clawed themselves ever closer to the forefront. And so, many drafts later, here's where we landed...hope you enjoy. :) 
> 
> Also, the idea that all pants should have pockets is a hill I am willing to die on. 
> 
> Finally, credit for the idea that Five’s siblings can't remember how each other's powers work must go to [hujwernoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hujwernoo/pseuds/hujwernoo) who wrote the lovely AU epic [Comes and Goes (In Waves)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406962). It’s quite wonderful, and if you haven’t read it yet I hope you do. 
> 
> Finally finally, for probably obvious reasons, the chapter title “Demons,” is from the song on the 2012 Imagine Dragons album, Night Visions.
> 
> I very much appreciate you reading, and am grateful for any comments or feedback!


	4. In the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego wasn’t unaware or unsympathetic to the fact that Five was clearly dealing with some shit. 
> 
> He also knew that sometimes the best thing to do in these situations was to shut the hell up. 
> 
> Five was an asshole, but he was still his brother, and he deserved to have space if that’s what he needed. 
> 
> If that meant pretending that he hadn’t watched Five go through some sort of emotional breakdown the night before, well, Diego could do that. 
> 
> Besides, they had a mission to accomplish.

Diego could appreciate a well-preserved classic car. So could Klaus' benefactor, if the vintage Rolls Royce in the driveway was any indication.

As he walked out to the car, Diego spotted Five, fully dressed in his uniform and buckled into the passenger seat.

He couldn’t bring himself to be surprised, though he wasn’t exactly sure how or when Five found out about the Sparrow Academy recon mission. Diego and Luther had planned it late the night before, after Five had blinked out of the bedroom, and no one had seen their oldest brother since.

He felt a sense of relief all the same. Both to see that his brother was in one piece, but also as a practical matter. Five was good at recon, and Diego would appreciate having him as backup. Luther was always a bit too…straightforward for stealth missions.

Diego simply nodded to Five as he got in the driver’s seat. Five ignored him and instead stared straight ahead with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched – all together body language that screamed _don't talk to me.  
_

Of course, Luther had always struggled with subtle messages. 

“So, you’re, uh, coming with us?” Luther was standing next to the passenger door awkwardly, clearly not sure what to do about losing his seat. “I thought you’d…you might still be upset after last night.”

Five’s eyeroll made it clear that line of conversation wasn’t going to happen. “Last night doesn’t matter. And it’s not like I’m going to let you two dumbasses scope out the Sparrows by yourself.”

The lie in Five’s first statement was plain as day, but Diego decided to let it go for now. Last night did matter. He could see it in Five’s eyes, which betrayed a storm behind the carefully manicured persona.

“Luther, just get in the back seat, alright?” Diego called over his shoulder. Luther sighed and grumbled as he squashed his frame into the too small seat. It was a good thing that Five didn’t exactly need ample leg room. 

Diego wasn’t unaware or unsympathetic to the fact that Five was _clearly dealing with some shit._ Through the years of dealing with Klaus and others who were precariously perched on the south side of mental health, Diego had learned that sometimes the best thing to say was nothing. Five was an asshole, but he was still his brother, and he deserved to have some space if that’s what he wanted.

If that meant pretending that he hadn’t watched Five go through some sort of emotional breakdown the night before, well, Diego could do that.

Besides, they had a mission to accomplish.

Diego was more than willing to give Five a break, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still pissed. The creepy revelations from the night before only confirmed that Five was _still_ ducking questions left and right. He also looked like he had been hit by a ton of bricks, and not in the metaphorical sense. Luther had confirmed that Five had, in fact, literally been buried by a collapsing fireplace. And the morning light was doing nothing but highlighting the deepening color of bruises on his face, neck and hands.

A pang of concern hit Diego in his gut. He tried to brush it off. It was _Five,_ and Five could handle himself.

_Except those times when he couldn’t._

Like when Five almost bled out from an undisclosed shrapnel wound.

Or when his powers failed as they were escaping the Commission agents.

Self-preservation was clearly not high up on Five’s priority list – hell, Diego wasn’t sure if it made the list at all. After all, his brother had filed “killing the entire Board of an agency that specialized in temporal assassination” under _irrelevant details_.

Diego snorted. Thinking of the Commission made him think of Lila, and he wasn’t ready to think of Lila. How her watery eyes looked up at him. How she had been so close to trusting him. To staying with him. But it hadn’t been enough. She had pulled back at the last minute, and used the briefcase to escape to…where?

He didn’t want to think of Lila as a threat, but he couldn’t rule it out. Not yet.

Five had made a weird face when Diego had mentioned Lila last night. He wondered if Five knew how to find her. Having worked as a field agent at the Commission for years, it wasn’t impossible that he knew about a hideout or other location that Lila was likely to go to. Diego made a mental note to ask Five about it when they got back.

But now it was time to go. “You guys strapped in?” Diego called at his brothers. Luther nodded, looking uncomfortable in the back seat. Unsurprisingly, Five said nothing.

As he drove, Diego’s thoughts again circled back to the night before. He doubted Five would believe it, but he hadn’t really intended his questions to wound so deeply. He had been prepared for Five to shrug him off, or to be surly about it. What he hadn't been prepared for was for Five to practically crumble in front of them. If it had been anyone else, Diego would have expected them to break down and cry. 

Instead, Five had just looked…empty. It was obvious his mind was somewhere else well before his physical body left. Deep flashes of despair and too many emotions to count had run across his face as he delivered his monologue, and once finished, he had ignored any offers of comfort or quarter.

Diego didn’t even think he had heard them.

And then he had blinked out.

Typical Five.

It was almost a relief to have him gone. At least it was something familiar, versus the strangeness of everything else that night.

Once Five had blinked out to...somewhere - Diego honestly had no idea - the rest of them had dispersed quickly. Allison, Vanya and Klaus had wandered off to their rooms, with some vague discussion of using the van to go on a supply run the next day. Luther and Diego had returned to the living room to plan the Sparrow Academy recon op. Both were on edge, uncharacteristically united in the urge to do something. It was clear they had to learn more about the Sparrows. So they sketched out a plan.

Afterwards, Diego found sleep to be elusive. The unnerving events of the day – days, really - and conversation of that night fresh in his mind kept playing through his mind on a reel. The idea of his death had unsettled him more than he cared to admit. He remembered the nightmare of Ben’s death. He didn't often think of it these days, but he could still hear the screams, see the terror in Ben’s eyes.

Losing his sibling had been the worst moment of Diego’s life. Even worse than losing Eudora. The memories of both events evoked twin feelings of helplessness. He had been too late to do anything but hold them both lifelessly in his arms. Twice.

Diego wasn’t sure he’d be sane if he had to live through that again.

Five had done it three times. 

\---

Five was a man with long experience appreciating the finer points of hangovers, and he had to give his current one an exemplary grade. Everything hurt. Even his _teeth_ ached, and he could feel every bump in the road as Diego drove. Of course, he also had a headache, but that was so much to be expected as to be forgettable. He wondered idly when was the last time that he _didn’t_ have a headache.

He hadn’t even drank that much – not really. No, he knew this hangover was a particularly fun consequence of his unexpected emotional spiral the night before.

It had all been so…intense. By the end of the night, Five had struggled to differentiate which parts of the conversation had been spoken out loud and which ones were in his head. Dolores had confirmed that he had successfully explained the time travel, so there was that. She had been particularly nice and congratulatory, and seemed to think that Five had achieved something.

But everything after that was a hot mess. He could only hope that he hadn’t been babbling incoherently, and that the more troubling pieces of the narrative were still his alone. By the end of the night, he had almost been too lost in his thoughts to notice that the others were in the room. 

At one point he had blinked out, straight into the house’s farthest away bathroom, where he puked his guts out as his overwhelmed body shook from exhaustion. Five had sat shivering on the bathroom floor for an unknowable amount of time, his mind a fragmented mess of words and glares and ghosts and despair. The only mercy to be had was that no one came after him. Eventually, he had been able to put enough pieces of himself back together to stumble to his feet and blink away into one of the unused bedrooms and wrap himself in a blanket to ward of the remnants of the chills.

Apparently, he had even drifted off to sleep, because he woke up to the early morning sun streaming in his window. By that time, the intensity of the night before was fading, fuzzy and intertwined with dreams and nightmares, and Five once again could feel himself hold together at the seams.

He was desperately thankful to be in one piece. 

Five had lost pieces of himself before. Sometimes it was a gradual thing, like rolling down a long and winding road where his thoughts got louder and his senses more acute until everything he saw and touched was unbearably raw. Shapes and colors and textures became overwhelming and he felt fractured and out of place. It was only later, after he was able to stitch himself back together, that he would even realize that he had gotten lost at all.

Other times it was the ghosts who chased him, herding and circling him tighter and tighter until he had nowhere to go. When this happened, _Five_ was forced to curl into a little ball, locked inside of himself for days or weeks or months on end. The fragments of these times that he could remember were like he was watching a movie, his body going through the motions of surviving while he was numb and powerless to stop it. Without _Five_ in control, emotions ran wild, overwhelming his body and wreaking havoc on his mind. In these times, Dolores would sit with him, running her hands through his hair and caressing his cheek as he trembled and cried. He would grab onto her desperately, pressing his face into her with his fingers wrapping around her body and digging into her skin until they quivered and cramped. He knew if he let go, gave into the darkness pulling at him, he might never find his way back.

And then there were the times when the monster took him. Dark times, where his emotions burned with white hot rage that spilled out of unseen depths, scorching him to his core and blinding him to everything. His time with the Commission had only amplified its strength, as the assassin part of Five was ever at odds with the boy he used to be. Even Dolores couldn’t reach _Five_ when the monster rode his back. But bit by bit over the years, he had learned how to disarm it, to cajole the monster back into its cage, to put it to sleep.

Sometimes Five wondered if the monster had always been part of him, or if it was a creature born out of the years of solitude and violence.

But at least for today Five had managed to wrangle…most of himself back to where it needed to be. The sleep helped, and so did another shower which cleared the last of the time-travel induced fog and soothed his aching muscles. Each sensation helped set his anchor more firmly in this world. Even the pain of his hangover did its part to keep him grounded.

There was even coffee when he popped into the kitchen not long after dawn. It had been started by some unknown early riser in the house, and Five was more than grateful.

His money was on Luther. Luther had always woken up early before a mission. Old habits die hard.

It really wasn’t hard to figure out what his brothers were up to. There was no way Diego and Luther wouldn’t be impatient enough to go back to the Academy. There was also no way that Five would let them go by themselves.

And so he had brought a mug of coffee and some toast to his room. While he ate and dressed, he listened to the murmurings and the creaks in the old house, and as such was able to gauge the timing to be in the car as his brothers were walking out the door. 

They were going to get answers.

\---

Diego pulled over a block from the Academy, in what he hoped was an inconspicuous location. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to see from this distance in the daylight than they had been able to glimpse last night. The Academy building still looked the same, with the exception that the Umbrella motifs in the glass and iron had been replaced with bird shapes. The buildings on either side were the same as Diego remembered, and the sidewalk held a handful of people walking to and from shops and restaurants that were located on nearby blocks. 

The first few hours passed uneventfully. Luther had tried to start conversations a few times, but with minimal responses from Diego and resolute silence from Five, he eventually gave up.

Suddenly, there was a flash and a noise like a siren. Presently, the Sparrows flew out the front door and into a waiting vehicle.

“They must be going on a mission,” Diego said, snapping to full alert. “Now’s our chance.” Five and Diego were both out of the car as soon as the Sparrows’ vehicle pulled around the corner. “Right,” Diego said. “Five, you’re with me. We’ll hit the back alley. Luther, you stay here and make sure we don’t miss anything up front.”

Five and Diego were moving down the street before Luther was able to extract himself from the backseat. “Hey,” he called, and the two stopped back to look at him. “Why do I have to be the lookout?”

“Because you’re not exactly stealthy, King Kong,” Diego threw over his shoulder and then they were running down the street.

As they reached the edge of the alley, Diego and Five crouched down and peered around the corner and down the dark corridor that they had just left not twenty four hours before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Diego didn’t see any movement so he chanced creeping around the corner, heading for a dumpster that was about a third of the way down the alley’s length. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Five follow, his head on a swivel. 

Scanning the building’s infrastructure from behind the dumpster, Diego didn’t see any obvious signs of surveillance. For whatever reason, Reginald hadn’t ever been overly concerned about the alley – his surveillance had apparently been mostly focused on his children. Diego remembered with disgust the surveillance tapes that Allison had found. 

“See what you can see down here. I’m going to climb up and get a higher vantage point. And the rooftop windows are pretty easy to get into.” As he spoke, Diego was already lightly pulling himself up the first rungs of the fire escape.

“Diego!” He could practically _hear_ Five's frown of disapproval. “You dumb idiot, get down here. You’ll be exposed up there.”

Ignoring Five, Diego climbing steadily and silently up the fire escape. He crouched to avoid windows and obvious access points, while trying to sneak glances into the windows of what he hoped were still less-often used rooms as he passed. Everything he saw seemed to be how he remembered it from their version of the Academy.

He _almost_ made it to the roof. 

“Stop right there,” Diego heard a voice from below him.

 _Shit._

There were four of them, converging on the alley from both sides. Diego was on the top level of the fire escape, but not close enough to any of the windows or the roof to reach them easily. He casually palmed two knives as he turned to look down. He noticed that they were all focused on him and hadn’t yet noticed Five crouching behind the dumpster. Good. That was an advantage. 

“What do you want?” Diego called down.

“Where’s your brother?” Their leader who looked like Ben got right to the point. Diego hotly decided that this imposter with an unfortunate haircut would henceforth be known as Discount-Ben. “We want to talk to Number Five.”

“Nuh-uh,” Diego gave what he hoped was a casual shrug. “He’s not here. You’ll have to talk to me.”

“Too bad for you,” Discount-Ben matched his shrug.

Several things happened very quickly. Tentacles shot out of Ben’s body up towards Diego. Diego was prepared for this, and threw himself to the side, screaming out for Luther to _get his ass over here_ as he ducked through the narrow opening in the fire escape and onto the concrete ledge. He successfully ducked Ben’s first volley, while releasing two knives. Figuring that Ben would expect the attack to be aimed at him, Diego instead veered the knives at his partner. It worked, and the Sparrow went down, pinned by both arms.

Luther appeared around the corner, arriving faster than Diego expected. Well, he wasn't one to knock when the odds were in his favor. He saw Luther hurl himself into two Sparrows, who had been distracted by trying to get a shot at Diego and were too slow to turn to face the new threat.

As expected, once Ben was distracted by the appearance of Luther, Five launched himself out from behind the dumpster, blinking and tackling Ben before the Horror could react. They both went down, brawling on the pavement.

Diego reached for more knives as he saw Five reach for Ben’s throat. Unfortunately, Ben recovered first, and before he could get a grip Five was grabbed by a tentacle and flung backwards into a wall. Two flashes, and the knives slashed through the tentacle that had wrapped itself around Five’s neck and was holding him against the wall.

Five fell to the ground, and Diego saw him focus on something above him, his eyes flashing with surprise. “Diego! Watch out!” 

He looked up at where Five's eyes were pointed, and saw a _fucking green cube_ come around the backside of the building. It was moving quickly, floating without any obvious means of proportion towards Diego. Two more knives flung themselves at the floating assailant, but it was too late. A flash, and then the ledge underneath Diego’s feet crumbled.

He scrabbled for a hand hold, but found nothing.

Another flash, and Diego found himself tipping backwards and cartwheeling through the air.

\---

Crouching behind the dumpster, Five decided that his assessment of Diego the night before was way, way too optimistic.

Diego was a fucking idiot.

The dual footsteps echoing on each side of the alley meant that assailants were coming in a coordinated assault. They were outnumbered and flanked on both sides while Diego was playing Batman up on a fire escape, exposed. 

“Stop right there,” Five heard a familiar voice. Yup, that confirmed the Sparrows were back, because that voice belonged to Ben. Sparrow Ben’s voice was rougher than Five remembered it being as a kid, obviously the voice of an older man. Still unmistakably Ben.

Five peeked out from underneath the dumpster. Ben and a flanking Sparrow were on his left. Another two Sparrows were closing in from his right. The only spot of luck was that neither group had appeared to notice him yet. They were all concentrated on Diego.

“What do you want?” Five heard Diego ask.

“Where’s your brother? We want to talk to Number Five.”

 _Shit,_ Five thought, grinding his teeth. His silent curses alternated their targets between Diego's idiocy and Five's stupidity for not deducing that this was a trap. 

Maybe Reginald just wanted to talk. He had in the 60s. But Five didn’t think so. There were easier ways than an ambush in the alley to indicate that you wanted to talk. Like a literal invitation, hand delivered to six siblings. 

Reginald had always been overly formal.

“Nuh-uh,” Diego responded with a shrug. “He’s not here. You’ll have to talk to me.”

“Too bad for you,” There was a threat in Ben’s voice, which was instantly realized with the release of the Horror, tentacles tracking up towards Diego. Five saw the flash of thrown knives and Diego lunging to the side. He felt rather than heard Luther come crashing around the corner, taking out the two nearest assailants.

Five was already moving, launching himself at Ben and tackling him to the ground. He tried to recall what he remembered from brawling with Ben as a kid. They had so rarely allowed the Horror to come out so his experience was rather limited. Using his small size as an advantage, he was able to avoid the Horror and his fingers lashed out to the man’s neck, trying for a chokehold.

But Ben recovered quickly, and before he could get a good grip Five was picked up and flung backwards. He hit the brick wall with a thud, pausing for a moment before another flash and he slid to the ground, his legs crumpling beneath him. 

Grinding his teeth and blinking back the stars, Five forced himself to focus. His position on the ground meant that he was the first to see the green cube float around the corner of the building.

There was no way that was good.

He heard himself shout a warning, but it was too late. The cube fired some sort of laser or energy projectile straight into the building, collapsing the concrete.

And Diego fell.

“NO!” Five's voice was amplified with Luther’s bellow. They could only watch as Diego hit the ground with a sickening thud.

_No._

He wasn’t moving, his limbs splayed at impossible angles.

_No._

Five felt the space between his heartbeats stretch out to infinity. “Diego,” he breathed.

_Not again._

For the fourth time, Five’s memory imprinted with the image of Diego’s lifeless eyes.

He had failed.

Again.

Time slowed tortuously as Five struggled to process what just happened. He distantly noticed Ben, now on his feet, stumble towards him menacingly. He felt Luther’s lumbering steps vibrating his bones as the giant ran down the alley. Five couldn’t make himself care about any of that. He was fixated on the crumpled ragdoll that was once his brother in front of them. 

Goddamn Diego and his goddamn hero complex. 

Time once again began winding, and Five heard himself screaming in rage and exhaustion and pain. Everything he had shoved down the night before and all the nights before that was spiraling up at once. Five leaned into it. He heard the monster rattling the bars of its cage. Let it loose. It didn't matter. He couldn’t find it in himself to care about anything except _his brother’s lifeless corpse in the alley_.

Then, like a jolt of lighting, Five stopped.

Time. All he needed was time. 

He heard the scream - his scream - morph into a laugh. The monster gave Ben a parting grin, toothy and feral, before Five slammed it back into its cage.

He could fix this. It had not been much more than a minute since Ben turned into the alley. Practically a handful of breaths since Diego’s body hit the pavement.

Five turned inward and reached for those tiny gossamer threads of time that he had grasped on the cold floor of the barn. The ones that slowed the clock and turned it backwards. For a moment, Ben was still reaching towards him, Luther was still running towards him, but then everything was saturated by blue light. Time wavered again, and in the space of the next heartbeat they were slowing, stopping, and then retreating.

Five felt his heart whump as it beat backwards. He felt power igniting in his chest, a burning sensation that he ignored along with everything else. He focused intently on Diego, only Diego, watching to see when his eyes lost that dead look, staring to see the small movements of his chest once again rising and falling.

Diego was falling again, but now the current of time was pulling him upwards. Before Diego could float too far away, Five reached out and grabbed him, pulling him free from the current's grip. Time protested, trying to rip Diego away, not giving up its prize willingly. Five refused to yield, willing Diego to be part of him, to stay with him in this pocket outside of time.

Five gulped air, his hands shaking as he struggled to hold onto the time currents at bay for the second time in as many days. Ben was creeping backwards now, ever so slowly. On the other side, Luther's form was doing the same.

The burning sensation in Five's chest became an inferno, choking the air out of him as the currents swirled around him, angry, twisted and wrong in their backwardness, threatening to burst through the walls that Five had built around himself and Diego.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Luther disappeared around the corner.

Now came the hard part. Five tightened his grip on the threads of spacetime and _twisted_ in a new way, causing the flow of time currents to come to a grinding halt. They bashed against Five, like a rogue wave in the ocean, threatening to tumble him and drown him all at once. Then, the currents shifted, thr once silky strands becoming mud, thick and slippery and hard to grab onto.

Panting, gulping for air, darkness threatened the corners of his vision as Five continued to pull at the threads, shaping them to his will. He felt burning energy pour out of him, wild and uncontrolled, with the effort. He was tired but it didn’t matter. His head throbbed and pounded and his vision exploded with bright light but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t breathe, but it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was getting his brother out of danger. 

Five’s mouth opened as if to scream, as he pulled up even more power, grasping the slippery threads and _willing_ space to submit to him.

Fuck anything and everything. He was going to _do this._

Grabbing and clawing and heaving, Five ripped space apart and _threw_ both of them into the blue void.

And then they were on the other side, falling. The portal spit them out with a violent heave. Five wobbled as the time currents flowed away, leaving him with no support but his own two legs. But he could breathe again, and he did, panting for air even as he stumbled under his brother’s weight. Diego’s arm was slung over Five’s shoulder and his body was squirming like it had not yet comprehended that it was still alive. 

Five's vision was blurry. The shadows in front of him took a moment to materialized into the outline of a man. Luther. Five tried to call out, but all he could manage was a squeak and a gasp. His lungs burned as he gulped air, stumbling forward propelled by the weight of his brother. 

He made one step. Two.

On the third step Five’s knees buckled under him and he fell, the air whooshing out of him. His knees hit the pavement and the rest of him hit Luther, who was suddenly as big as the entire world, catching both of them.

Time wobbled again. Though Five could see Luther’s mouth moving, making the shape of his name, no sound reached his ears.

For a moment, Five held Luther’s eyes.

Then, he was violently ripped away from reality by a current of bright pain, the inky void following close behind. Five's vision turned black as the darkness reached up and swallowed him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Five, you're still my favorite pint sized assassin, and I'm sorry that I show my feelings by heaping more trauma on you. I hope it will be some comfort that over the next few chapters I am going to make your siblings really think about all the crap they've put you through....
> 
> Title is "In the End," from Linkin Park's 2000 debut album.


	5. Apparitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _  
> "The rat  
>  In your brain  
> Turns a wheel  
> Connected to your guts and  
> All your faults are in me" _

Luther decided that being a lookout was a particularly special kind of useless feeling.

With a pang of regret, he recalled the umpteen times he had assigned the duty to Klaus. At the time, he hadn’t given it a second thought.

No wonder Klaus thought he was useless. Luther had told him that, over and over again.

Luther hated being useless. He hated it with every fiber of his being. Every memory of every training session screamed for him to do something. _Number One’s job is to lead. A leader is decisive, a leader takes action._ Variations on that theme had been instilled into Luther repeatedly since he was four years old.

Which is why he particularly hated being relegated to a lookout. Stuck next to the car, pacing and trying not to be too obvious while Diego and Five were scoping out the alley.

He wasn’t even able to _focus._ His mind kept wandering, doing its poor best to distract him from a depressing situation with even more depressing thoughts.

Luther wondered if he had done one useful thing in the past five years. He had been useless on the moon – a lookout with nothing to look out for. Then the apocalypse, which he had failed to stop. Then Dallas. Where he focused on scraping together a life. For a moment in Dallas he didn’t feel useless.

But it had all been a lie.

Just a few days later and he didn’t even miss it.

There hadn't been anything to miss.

These days, Luther ached with lack of purpose, the need to do _something_ useful. When he was a kid, he always had a purpose. He was Number One. The leader. Now, Luther kept no illusions that his siblings thought of him as a leader. Diego had never accepted his place in the hierarchy - Luther had never kid himself about that. And Klaus, well whenever Luther had wanted the team to go forward, Klaus was just as likely to go sideways. He thought Allison might have still followed him if he was brave enough to ask her. With the new version of Vanya, he honestly had no idea. Vanya had never even been part of his concept of a team before.

And then there was Five. Luther’s relationship with Five was…complicated.

As kids, Five had set himself up in opposition to Dad, which meant that more often than not he was in opposition to Luther. He hadn’t exactly been a rebel – that was more Klaus’ domain – but he was almost always…utilitarian in his actions, following his own internal compass rather than Reginald’s imposed will.

And then Five was gone. For years, decades.

Life moved on, and the team reshaped itself, before ultimately crumbling after Ben’s death.

Then Five fell out of the sky, looking the same as the day he left, crowing about the end of the world. Arrogant and dismissive as ever, but no longer driven by a child’s impatience, but instead by the weight of a lifetime.

Luther thought Five had half-expected his siblings to simply obey him. To share his goals and help execute his plans. But they weren’t kids anymore, and Five wasn’t Dad.

Even if he sometimes acted like him.

Luther also thought it was incredibly ironic that Five thought everyone would fall in line, because he could clearly remember one of his biggest challenges as Number One was the futility of getting Five to _stick to the goddamn plan_. Despite whatever strategy and tactics Luther set ahead of time, Five could almost be counted on to go off script if he spotted a target of opportunity, or thought he could create a tactical advantage.

None of this was ever discussed with Luther of course, and afterwards, Five was never remorseful, always pointing out the logic in his actions. _No plan survives contact with the enemy,_ delivered with a smirk, had been Five’s typical response when Luther chewed him out in countless after-mission debriefings. He remembered Five would stand there, small but defiant never willing to give once inch of ground.

Sometimes, the gambles had paid off, and Luther would reluctantly admit that Five had made the right call. But Five had also almost gotten himself killed too many times with his arrogance, which led him to take dumb stunts and risks. Luther remembered one of the closest calls was when Five had blinked into a burning building before they could clear a path to get anyone else in. They had been eleven. The two minutes after the roof caved in and before they could locate Five were two of the longest of Luther’s life.

So yeah, one could say Five’s acceptance of Luther’s leadership had always been conditional, at best.

\---

Sudden movement near the Academy caught Luther’s eye, breaking him out of his thoughts. Two unknown people in uniforms were silently moving out of the Academy building. He found that suspicious given that the Sparrows had sped away in a van over five minutes ago. His suspicions were immediately confirmed as he saw the figures sneak into the alley where Diego and Five had entered minutes before.

 _Shit,_ Luther swore silently. His legs were already carrying him towards the alley, but he was hopelessly out of position.

_Unacceptable, Number One._

Luther had almost reached the alley when he felt a wave of dizziness like a dropping roller coaster landing in the pit of his stomach. Then, he heard the unmistakable whoosh of a teleport. He skidded to a stop just as Five and Diego were spat out of the air in front of him. Diego had his arm wrapped around Five and was helping – no, Luther realized it was the other way ‘round - Five was the one half carrying and half _dragging_ Diego, who was practically splayed across Five’s back.

Luther stared in shock, taking in the sweaty bangs plastered to his older brother’s forehead and the blood that ran freely from his nose. Five's eyes were wide and his chest heaved like he had just run a marathon.

How had the operation gone sideways so fast?

“Five!” Luther yelled. He covered the remaining ground between them in a few giant steps, reaching out his hands to steady the pair, who had made only a few shaky steps towards Luther.

Five’s mouth opened as if to speak, but all that came out was a groan as his knees buckled. He crashed forward into Luther, bringing a semi-conscious Diego with him.

“Shit, Five, what happened?” Luther caught most of both brothers in a tangled mess of limbs. Five’s eyes were still open, wide eyed but glassy as he blinked up at Luther. Then a shudder coursed through the boy’s frame. Luther felt his muscles jerk and then go lax.

“Five, FIVE?” Fuck. Five was completely out.

Luther switched tactics. “Diego! Hey – hey, you with me, buddy?” He didn’t have an arm free, but he shook Diego gently with the one holding him. Diego was beginning to stir, and at the sound of his name he blinked rapidly, finding Luther’s gaze and managing a noise halfway between a groan and a snarl.

“Come on, get up – we’ve got to get out of here.” Pulling Five’s limp form apart from Diego, Luther was grateful to see that the latter was now standing, albeit unsteadily, on his own feet.

Noises from the alley increased, pressing the urgency of the situation. The Sparrows must have figured out that their prey had escaped. Luther picked up Five with both arms. “Diego, can you run?”

Diego nodded, already moving in the direction of the car, stumbling at first but becoming more coordinated with each step. Luther began lumbering towards the car, trying to hurry without jostling his burden too much.

“Give me the keys,” Diego called. Luther made a judgment call that Diego had made respectable progress in coordinating his brain and limbs over the last few seconds, so he fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them in a leading arc. As Diego grabbed them out of the air, Luther shifted Five to a one-armed carry, allowing him to pull open the car door as soon as he heard the telltale _click_ of the locking mechanism releasing.

Opening the door wide, Luther tossed Five into the backseat. Five’s limp body slammed against the opposite door.

“Oh, shit,” Luther grimaced. The boy was too small and he was too strong.

_Sorry, buddy._

Luther jammed himself in the backseat, lunging for Five as Diego slammed into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition and peeled out of the parking space in a wide turn. The centrifugal force threw Five back against Luther, who braced himself on the seatback with one hand while using his other to keep his brother from being whiplashed around the backseat as Diego poured on the acceleration.

“Diego! What happened? Did Five get hit?” As best he could in the cramped backseat Luther patted Five down, checking for injuries.

“I don’t know,” Diego yelled back, his eyes moving back and forth from the road to the rear view mirror, watching the Sparrows who had emerged from the alley and were giving futile chase on foot disappear behind them as they sped down the street. “I was on the fire escape.”

Luther frowned at that apparent non-sequitur. He hoped fervently that Diego didn’t have a concussion. He saw Diego open his mouth, pause, shut it, and then frown in confusion. This did not help Luther’s confidence in his brother’s fitness to drive. 

“I was almost on the roof - and then suddenly I was out on the street with you.” Diego cursed and so did Luther, because that in no way clarified the situation.

But the next statement was worse.

“Shit. The Sparrows were looking for him. For Five. Ben asked where Five was”

“Ben was there? He was looking for Five?” Any remaining hope in Luther’s stomach was replaced by a cold dread. Ben wasn’t one of the Sparrows that he had seen going around the front of the building, which means that Diego and Five had been ambushed by more than one group.

Diego slammed his fists into the steering wheel. Luther grimaced and looked back down at his brother. Five’s nose had thankfully stopped bleeding, so Luther took his sleeve and gently wiped the blood from his brother’s face.

What did the Sparrows want with Five?

“Five, what did you do this time?” he murmured helplessly.

\---

Diego didn’t say much else during the drive back and Five was unsurprisingly even less conversational, so Luther’s brain decided to resume brooding.

The flavor of the day was theme and variations on _Luther is a shitty brother._

He knew he had given Five a hard time last night. In part, Luther felt like he was doing his duty to protect his little brother, but in the end he had only ended up pissing him off. Five’s accusations had hurt, but he couldn’t really argue the truth of them. Luther knew that he had been unfair to Five in Dallas. He had been _angry_ at Five. For never being straight with them. For stranding them, alone in the 60s. For yelling about the apocalypse, disappearing, then reappearing a year later and starting the whole process over again.

In truth, Luther simply hadn’t been ready to face another apocalypse.

To fail to stop another apocalypse.

No. It had been easier to pretend it was _Five’s_ problem to solve.

Easier than remembering how he squeezed Vanya until she passed out.

Easier to retreat into the shadow of a life he had cobbled together in 1963.

Easier to _throw his brother off a fucking balcony_ than face his father again.

Easier to wonder if another version of Five, one who was older and more put together would be…simpler to deal with.

When Five had brought the topic up last night, Luther’s blood ran hot with shame. He was never _really_ going to shoot Five. Or at least that’s what he told himself. But at the time the words that the old man had said had made so much sense, and he had just wanted to craziness to stop.

He was tired of dealing with a small feral brother who somehow reminded him so much of their father.

Maybe paradox psychosis was contagious.

Luther remembered Five’s eyes as he stared down the barrel of the gun.

Pleading.

It wasn’t unlike the look that he had seen on Five’s face the night before, as he stood before Diego, defiant as ever. Yet Luther saw that his eyes silently begged for understanding. That one look made it clear to Luther the miles that this Five had traveled. Older, stranger, more calloused and weathered by time. Somehow even more single minded.

Strangely more empathetic.

But Luther had also seen glimpses of a lost and lonely boy. A boy that still refused to accept his limits. A boy that could still drive Luther nuts.

Luther had missed that boy terribly.

He hoped Five didn’t actually think that he would kill his own brother. 

Luther didn’t think he could stand it if he did.

\----

When they finally reached the house, Diego had barely stopped the car before he was running inside, calling out for Allison and the others. Luther picked up his brother lightly, this time remembering that Five weighed nothing, and followed into the house as fast as he could.

Allison had cleared off the dining room table and took command of the situation. “Put him down on the table here,” she ordered Luther. “Vanya, see if you can find a sewing kit. Klaus, find some alcohol,” Allison commanded, and subsequently ignored the inane woohoo noise.

Luther gently laid Five down on the table. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him as far as I can tell. Well, not anything that wasn’t already wrong,” he amended. “I mean, if you look at him - he’s kind of a mess.”

Diego punching the table, causing them all to jump. “Fuck. I knew he wasn’t up for this.” He moved over to Five’s face and glared at the unconscious boy, his voice betraying both irritation and guilt. “Stupid proud old man wouldn’t let us check him for injuries.”

“Well, we’ll do it now, Diego – get out of my way.” Allison shoved her brother to the side and began looking over Five appraisingly. “And stop punching things and find something useful to do. Take off his jacket and tie, to start”

While Diego was dealing with the clothing, Allison gently probed Five’s face, neck and head. They were mottled with ugly cuts and bruises, but nothing new, or worse than the day before. More bruises running up and down his arms, a gash and a lump on his head. Allison remembered he had mentioned something about a frying pan. There was a suspicious stripe of purple across his throat.

Lifting up his shirt, Allison grimaced to see his shrapnel wound was still there – the stitches had ripped open and were bleeding, but he didn’t appear to have lost enough blood to explain the unconsciousness.

“Why hasn’t this healed?” Allison wondered, as she probed the shrapnel wound.

“He was only in 1963 for a week,” Diego had recovered from his tantrum, found a flashlight somewhere and was shining it in Five’s pupils one at a time.

“ _What?”_ Allison visibly recoiled. “A week? But we were there for years.”

“Years for you and Klaus, and Luther,” Vanya came back in with one of those ubiquitous Danish cookie tins that was home to a sewing kit. “Only a few months for Diego and myself.”

“And a week for Five.”

They all stared at each other. “Why doesn’t anybody in this godforsaken family ever communicate?” Allison grumbled.

It was so easy to forget the complications of time travel. It was also easy to forget that Five was human, since he fought like a banshee, both physically and with words. Allison remembered how as kids he would dance and spin around her in sparring sessions, using speed and a calculated bit of mania to make up for his smaller stature. How he would stay after even the most exhausting training sessions, working and reworking moves until he could execute them perfectly.

She and Five had also sparred academically. Those battles she had enjoyed more. Five’s passion, like Luther’s, may have been mathematics, but he approached every subject hungrily. Allison remembered Five challenging her to language competitions - Spanish, Russian, even ancient Greek that year when they were eight. They would run through the house, speaking in tongues and challenging each other with harder and harder questions, both refusing to be the first to give in. She had more than one memory of fighting Five over the copy of a particular dictionary in the library.

Brothers were too damn stubborn, Allison thought. 

Speaking of stubborn…

“Diego, what happened? Did you see anything?” Allison asked, still methodically probing Five’s body for injuries. “I can’t find what’s wrong with him.”

“I don’t know. One minute I was up on the fire escape, the next I think I was falling. Then we were out in the street.”

“Yeah, I saw Five blink you both in front of me,” Luther confirmed that part of the story. Then remembering that Diego still hadn’t answered his question, he continued. “Why the hell were you on the fire escape, Diego? And why were they looking for Five?”

“Luther, I was doing _recon._ Because it was a _recon_ mission.” Diego spoke slowly and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “And I don’t know why they were looking for Five, but they didn’t know he was there. Not till he jumped out at Ben.”

“Ben was there?” Klaus asked. He had moved over to sit by Five’s head, holding his neck steady while Allison checked in his mouth.

“So all we know is that they were looking for Five and that you climbed the fire escape and apparently got amnesia?” Allison spared a grimacing glance for her brother before returning to Five. “What, did you catch it from Vanya?”

Diego grimaced, but there was no return volley, only a look of something slightly below terror that could have been guilt.

Allison’s brain then caught up to an important part of a conversation. “Wait, you _fell_? How far? Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, uh, no. I remember falling, but I don’t remember hitting the ground. Or…really anything at all.”

They stared at each other in puzzlement.

“So, you were falling, and Five was attacking Ben, and you don’t remember anything else until you were out on the street?” Allison confirmed.

“Yeah.”

“Unless you suddenly learned how to fly, Diego, I think it’s a safe conclusion that Five must have blinked you out of there.”

“But how did he blink you out of the air?” Vanya chimed in. No one had an answer to that.

Puzzled, they all turned to look at Five.

“So…maybe he’s like this because he blinked too much?” Luther turned back to the obvious conclusion.

No one answered. They all remembered Five come out of training sessions shaky and pale from overusing his powers. But nothing like this.

“Its the best idea we've got. Because otherwise, I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Allison sat down in frustration. She checked off points on her fingers. “I don’t think he has any internal bleeding, but I can’t really be sure without some medical facilities. We can stitch up his wound and some of these bruises could use ice and bandaging, but I don’t know why he’s unconscious. Maybe he got hit in the head. Or, if this really is caused by his powers…I’m not sure what else we can do.”

“We could take him to the hospital,” Vanya spoke up again.

“We _can’t_ take him to the hospital,” Diego interrupted, shaking his head. “I know he’s not a kid because he keeps reminding us of that fifty freaking times a day, but he still looks like one. And we can’t show up at a hospital with a kid who looks like he just got the shit kicked out of him.”

“He was holding his head yesterday,” Vanya recalled. “Like he had a migraine. Maybe it’s related.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t attacked him yesterday, Diego –“ Luther began.

In an instant Diego was across the room, his face inches away from Luther’s. “Me? _You’re_ the one who insisted we go up there, Number One.”

“Hey, boys. Boys! Calm the fuck down. This isn’t the time.” Allison jumped up and again the three of them formed a triangle. The other two backed away slightly, not giving up but unconsciously making space for her. “Tell me what you remember about Five’s powers. Can they hurt him?”

“He can run out of fuel – he told me when we were jumping away from the Commission,” Diego was still glaring at Luther.

“But he fought with Lila after that. In the house, and in the barn, so he must have gotten them back somehow,” Luther’s eyes never wavered from Diego even as he spoke to Allison. “But that was after he got buried by a pile of bricks -”

While Luther and the others were engaging in a typical Hargreeves heated argument, Klaus had remained sitting at the table. His hands were still holding Five’s head, and he was trying to decide how concerned to be about the tremors that had started coursing through Five’s body a few moments ago. His concern immediately turned to alarm when he saw Five's hands begin to twitch. “Uhoh,” he whispered. “Five, you don’t want to do that.”

Small blue sparks appeared between Five’s fingers. Klaus looked up at his siblings, still fighting. “Uh, guys,” he interjected.

“He _what_?” Allison whirled to face Luther. “Bricks?”

“Yeah, he saw the fireplace collapsing, and pushed me out of the way.”

“Luther, what the hell? He’s in the body of a thirteen-year-old!” Allison rolled her eyes and threw her arms up in frustration.

“Hey! _Meine Familie_!” Klaus said, this time his voice high and insistent. The blue sparks had become a sputtering hum. “Stop arguing for a hot minute, because I think Five is trying to _jump away.”_

Everyone whipped back around to look at Klaus. Five’s hands and torso were halfway covered in a steady blue glow.

Diego reacted first, crossing the space between them in a heartbeat. He grabbed Five by the wrists and slammed them forcefully against the table, the impact causing Klaus to jump and forcing the fingers to unclench. Five yelped in pain, but the blue energy dissipated.

“Be careful!” Vanya sounded horrified and rushed over to her brother. “Diego, don’t hurt him!”

“Vanya, he’ll hurt himself worse if he blinks. And then we’ll have to chase him down – who knows where he’ll end up.” Diego didn’t let go of Five’s wrists but loosened his grip slightly.

While Diego was disarming him, Klaus again cupped his hands around his small brother’s head, pressing his thumbs to his cheeks and rubbing them in small circles. “Hey, Five? Five look at me.” There was no response, but Klaus continued a stream of soothing words, an uncharacteristically focused expression on his face. “Five, you need to stay here with us. Do you understand? No – no jumping. Just stay here. We’ve got you, Five-o.”

Five didn’t respond but his breathing became slower, and the tremors subsided. As the tension spilled out of the boy, Diego let go of his wrists, which thankfully remained slack on the table. Klaus kept his hands on Five’s head and began stroking his hair with gentle fingers and humming a nameless tune. 

“Well, if we can’t take him to the hospital -” Allison’s words returned them to the practical matters. She looked around as Diego and Luther both shook their heads at her as confirmation. Vanya looked torn but didn’t disagree. Klaus remained focused on Five. “- we’ll have to watch him. We’ll take shifts.”

“Oh boy, Five’ll just love that,” Diego scoffed.

“He’s unconscious. He’ll _deal,_ ” Allison pointed out, closing the discussion. She finished cleaning up Five’s injuries and straightened his clothes. “And if you guys are done with playing pissing contest –“ she gave a pointed look to both Diego and Luther. “You can help me get him upstairs to the bedroom."

Luther gently picked up his brother for the third time that day and carried him upstairs to the room. Given the pristine state of the bed he was pretty sure Five hadn’t slept there the night before. Allison followed them up, and helped Luther arrange gangly limbs on the bed and cover Five with a blanket.

“I’ll stay with him first” Luther said, pulling up a chair, which creaked and threatened to but ultimately did not collapse under his weight.

“Okay,” Allison nodded, putting her hand on Luther’s shoulder. “We’ll take shifts every few hours. Diego wants to set a guard outside as well, so we’re going to be busy.”

“That makes sense,” Luther nodded back.

They fell into silence for a minute. Then Luther felt Allison squeeze his shoulder. “You ok?” she asked.

Luther turned and looked up at her sadly. “No, I mean yeah. I don’t know,” he sighed. “Ever since Five came back…again…it’s just been…a lot, you know? The whole apocalypse thing again? And time travel. And now this.”

“Luther…I know…” Allison crouched down to speak with him, keeping her hand on his shoulder. “But we’ll get through this. Five’ll be ok”

“You know the last time I saw him like this –“ he gestured at Five, “he was passed out drunk. Diego and I carried him home from the library. That’s when I found out our kid brother was a time traveling assassin. He called himself the _Four Freakin’ Horsemen.”_

Allison laughed.

Luther stared at Five sympathetically for a moment. “He did it all to protect us, you know?”

“I know,” Allison said quietly.

\---

 _Why can’t this family figure out how to be a team again?_ Luther questioned, despairingly. It was two days and several decades before. The family was in Elliot’s store in Dallas watching their faces become famous on the morning news. They sat in stunned shock, dumbfounded, and more than a bit afraid of the impending retaliation of the Commission. Or the FBI.

 _We really did screw up_.

Luther was frustrated when Vanya insisted on leaving, announcing that she was going to find her farm friends. It had seemed a pointless waste of time. But there was no stopping her, and his calls for the family to stick together went unheard.

No one listened to him anymore.

Luther barely noticed when Klaus stood up and left a moment later. But then again, Luther didn’t usually give a lot of attention to what Klaus did even when he wasn’t distracted by their possible doom.

He did notice when their smallest brother began pacing, slowly at first and the more frantically, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, his eyebrows knitted in thought.

“Guys, we have to go with her,” Five announced, stopping suddenly. The three remaining siblings turned to look at him. Five met each of their gazes in turn.

“Luther is right. _We have to stick together_.” They stared at him dubiously, but Five made a chopping motion with his arms, not leaving any room for protest.

“No – listen to me,” he continued. “We have to stick together, but more than that – we have to _fix Vanya_. Remember? She’s the bomb. We can’t let her walk out of here alone.”

 _Five thinks I’m right?_ Luther’s brain was stuck on that thought.

Five began pacing again. “Maybe we averted the apocalypse now, but if we don’t fix Vanya, _she will do it again._ Regardless of whether the Commission comes after us or not.”

Luther watched Allison and Diego’s reactions. Both of them appeared more than a bit disgruntled at yet another change of plan from their most secretive and lately pretty asshole-ish brother.

But by now Luther was used to Five’s rants – he had been practically _raving_ ever since he got to Dallas, never mind the paradox psychosis. Switching back and forth between _maneuvering_ and _threatening_ and less often _pleading._ But never shutting up about that damn apocalypse.

More than once in the past week Luther had wondered if Five had finally lost his mind.

So Luther was more than surprised to see Allison shake her head and then slowly nod in agreement. “Five's right. We need to help Vanya. We need to help _each other_.” She looked around at the others. “How many times has one of us asked for help, and how many times have we let each other down?”

Diego and Luther just stared. Apparently deciding her brothers were two slow on the uptake, Allison announced “Well, I’m going with her,” and turned to walk out the door.

Diego looked at Luther and then at Five. He threw up his hands. “I guess if the Commission is coming after us anyway, it doesn’t really matter where we are.”

That just left Luther and Five. “Luther, I…” Five trailed off and Luther saw his expression change. Exasperation chased frustration over his face, but he didn’t voice any further thoughts, instead settling on a resigned expression and a tight smile _._

Luther barely registered the expression. He was processing his own curious thought that had appeared in his mind just as Allison and Diego walked out the door.

It suddenly clicked.

Five, with his singular focus on stopping the apocalypse, had achieved what Luther had been unable to do for more than a decade. What _none_ of them had been able to do.

Five had gotten the Umbrella Academy to work together again.

They had all left, one by one.

Now, one by one, Five had brought them together.

As kids, Luther and Five had always been the most loyal to the Academy – no, that wasn’t right, Luther corrected himself. Luther had been loyal to the Academy, but he now realized Five’s loyalty was different.

Five’s loyalty was to his _family._

Five’s expression had turned to a quizzical frown as he peered up at Luther.

“Sure,” Luther said simply. “You said it - I’m right. So let’s go.”

 _Let the little asshole sort that one out_.

Luther saw a flicker of emotion chased away by a hint of an actual smile - the relief becoming palpable on Five’s face.

They both turned and walked out of Elliot’s door for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright alright there was so much I wanted to put in here and I went back and forth a few times about what to say. I really wanted to have the siblings PAY ATTENTION to Five. And I wanted to explore Luther's voice and his relationship with Five, because I love that the brothers have so many parallel and antagonistic characteristics and interactions. And I wanted to fill in the gap in S2E10 after Vanya went out to the car because it really felt like there was a missing scene in the show. And then as I was writing I found out Allison also had a few stories to add, so...here we are.
> 
> Title is "Apparitions" from Matthew Good Band from 1998's Underdogs Album. The song is so beautiful and haunting and I imagine Luther might have listened to this song when he was feeling lonely on the moon.


	6. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _  
> The trouble it might drag you down  
>  If you get lost, you can always be found  
> Just know you're not alone  
> 'Cause I'm going to make this place your home  
> _  
> 
> 
> \- Home (Phillip Phillips, 2012)

It was Vanya’s shift when Five finally turned the corner from _passed out_ to _sleeping_.

She had crept into the room in the dark hours of the morning to find Diego slumped in the chair by the bed, drawing shallow indentations on his skin with a knife – the Diego version of pinching himself to stay awake, she guessed. Luther and Allison had tried everything they could think of to get Diego to rest, but he had complained incessantly that he was _fine,_ and insisted both on taking the first guard shift and then an overnight shift with Five. Allison had finally thrown up her hands, conceding with a muttered comment about “damn stubborn Hargreeves men.” 

“Hey Diego.”

Vanya’s hand on his shoulder was light, but still he bolted upright at the touch, then tried to cover up his flinch by turning it into a stretch. “Oh - hi Vanya.”

She turned to look at their brother. “How’s Five?”

“I don’t know.” The words were bitter in Diego’s mouth. “What you see is what there is to tell you. He hasn’t woken up. Breathing, pulse, temperature - well, at least his vitals aren’t terrible. But he keeps having these fucking fits – and when he shakes you got to watch out that he doesn’t try to jump – oh, shit – just like that -"

As if on command, Five’s body had curled in on itself, convulsing painfully. Blue sparks lit up his clenched fists. 

“Five, come on brother, work with me. We’re not going to do this.” Diego wearily gathered Five’s hands in his and pulled the fingers apart, rubbing lightly until the sparks were gone. Vanya noticed that this time how the sparks sputtered and fizzed unevenly, a far cry from the regular hum that she associated with Five’s power. 

The part that scared Vanya the most was that through it all, Five gave no resistance, no sign at all that he was aware of what was going on. As the tremor subsided, it left him wheezing, his face pallid and still mottled with bruises and scrapes.

Diego moved to settle Five back on the bed, and Vanya grabbed a clammy hand, the fingers still trembling with aftershocks. _He looks like a ghost,_ she thought _._ Without the rise and fall of his chest to indicate he was still breathing, she might have mistaken Five for a corpse.

She looked up at Diego. “He’s getting weaker, isn’t he,” Vanya stated, the fear cold in the pit of her stomach.

Diego grimaced, but nodded. There wasn’t much else to say. There wasn’t anything they could think of to do.

Vanya sighed. “Go get some sleep, Diego,” She used her free hand to pull the nearby chair closer. “It’s my watch. I’ll stay with him.”

Diego stretched again and stifled a yawn. “Thanks. And Vanya – yell if you need anything. If…anything happens. I’m going to check on Klaus and see how the watch is going, then I’m crashing in the next bedroom over.” He hooked a thumb to the left to indicate direction. “Allison’s on the other side – I think she’s asleep by now but she should hear you if you yell.” 

Vanya nodded, internally dreading the idea of having to yell for one of the siblings.

_That would mean…mean that Five could be…_

She banished the morbid thought with a shake of her head, sending Diego off with a tight smile.

\---

Nothing much happened for the first hour. Vanya had eventually picked up a book and paged through it, but her mind wasn’t able to focus on the words and she kept finding herself returning to the same passages, which blurred and shifted on the page. Besides, she found it hard to tear her eyes away from Five for more than a few seconds. Not when any small movement might signal a change in his condition.

When the next tremor came, it started softly. His face contorted into a deep frown as his shoulders hunched and his limbs twitched. Vanya kept a careful eye on his hands, watching for any signs of another power buildup. As his body shook, he began muttering, gibberish at first, but then clarifying into sounds that seemed….familiar to Vanya. She leaned closer, and it took her a minute, but then she gave a small laugh. She knew why the sounds were familiar - it was Greek.

Of course, Five would be babbling in ancient languages.

“Nerd,” she mumbled at her brother, chuckling.

But the moment of peace was gone in a flash as the full weight of a convulsion slammed into Five. He thrashed wildly on the bed, crying out in a voice high and soft, a sound which belied the violence in his movements. This time the blue energy barely managed a glow, fizzling out weakly between his fingers before Vanya could even get a grip on them. Still, she grabbed onto him, vainly trying to keep his body from shaking itself apart. He writhed for almost a minute before the fit subsided, leaving him once again gasping for breath.

Vanya rubbed his cold hands and brushed the hair back from his face, feeling utterly helpless and wishing there was something _–_ _anything_ – she could do for him.

“Five, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you’re hurt.” Tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on her hands and then his. “Please be ok, Five,” she whispered.

_I need you to be ok._

\---

Growing up, Five was Vanya’s favorite brother. Unlike the others, who mostly teased or ignored her, Five felt…homey, a rare and precious feeling in the stark and unyielding environment that was the Academy. From the time they were very small, Five was the one she would go to, when she wanted to laugh, or especially when she wanted to cry.

He had made time for Vanya – made _space_ for her, when no one else would. 

When they were four. _I brought you a T-Rex bandaid because Mom only gave you a plain one but I know dinosaurs are your favorite._

When they were seven. _What do you mean, Dad says you can’t have a name? That’s bullshit and you know it._

When they were eleven. _Come out to Griddy’s with us. I don’t give a fuck if Diego gets mad, you’re our sister and we’re going to get some damn donuts._

Once he had gotten a handle on his spatial jumps, Five would jump into her room on a regular basis. Often she would hear him muttering about his latest equations before the light from the blue flash even dissipated. Sometimes he would blink in late at night, engrossed in a book, and make himself comfortable by the foot of her bed, where they would both read in silent but not unfriendly company until they drifted off to sleep.

Occasionally Ben would join them, and while they were both always gone by morning, Vanya could sometimes see the indentations that they had left in the blankets, books scattered across the bed. More than once she had laid there well past her alarm, imagining the warmth of their bodies, until Grace had to come and fetch her for breakfast. 

Those were some of Vanya’s most precious childhood memories, late nights with Five and Ben.

When Five left, her world had fractured. When Ben died, it had shattered completely.

For years Vanya would catch herself saving a story, imagining of how Five would laugh, or cry - well, she would be the one to cry, Five never cried – when she told him. And the world would feel right for just a moment before reality once again crashed around her, only a dull emptiness remaining in the space that Five used to fill. 

Sometimes, she told the story anyway, tear rolling down her face as she whispered to the darkness. 

Eventually, Vanya’s memories faded, worn down with time, but never forgotten. And then it had been the small things that had pulled at her the most. Endless hours daydreaming whether he would have liked the peanut butter and chocolate birthday cake she baked on their fifteenth birthday. Whether he would have come to watch her play in her first violin concert at seventeen. Whether he would have finally grown taller than her, firmly cementing her place as the shortest of the siblings.

And then Five _had_ been there. Falling out of the sky, no less.

And what had Vanya done, when she saw her favorite brother again? Acted like _he_ was the crazy one. She wanted to kick herself for that. Wanted to blame the pills, blame anything really.

_Your brother comes back after seventeen years and instead of giving him a hug you…recommend him to a therapist?_

Five had come to find her in Dallas anyway.

At least this time, Vanya could blame the amnesia for the careless way she had treated him. Driving off, leaving him standing outside Luther’s boarding house. Standing her ground on the side of the road, refusing to go with him without Sissy and Harlan. She had even thrown that cruel line about him being the reason they were stranded.

_Just tell me that when I need you, you’ll be ready._

She hadn’t been.

Still, Vanya didn’t exactly _regret_ her choices. At the time they made sense. They still made sense…sort of. Sissy mattered. Harlan mattered, and she couldn’t imagine leaving them in 1963 until she did.

But last night was a slap in the face about how much their actions – _her_ actions – had cost Five. What he had gone through – was still going through. Just for a chance to bring his family home. 

_Would Five have told us that we died? That he saved us? Any of it - if Diego hadn’t dragged it out of him?_

Vanya knew he wouldn’t have. Because, ironically, Five didn’t want to hurt _them._

Five was prickly, Five was sarcastic, and Five was angry and vengeful and oh so complicated. But underneath it all, Vanya was beginning to see that there was something inside her brother made him fundamentally incapable of hurting his family. At least, not in the ways that mattered.

Not in the ways they had hurt each over the last thirteen years. 

But Five – well, Five had shown up remembering the times when they had been a family. Remembering it _for_ them, loudly and repeatedly, to the point where they had started remembering it for themselves.

Bringing the Hargreeves children back together might have been Five’s most monumental task. Maybe even harder than stopping the apocalypse.

_Well, Five had certainly never been light on ambition._

Ambition.

Light. 

_Harlan._

In a flash of inspiration, Vanya wondered if she could actually help Five.

Wiping her eyes and blinking away the tears, she thought hard about the day Harlan had drown. She remembered the electric feeling deep inside her, as she pulled away the water and breathed air into his lungs. It wasn’t just the air though, she knew that now. Somehow, something inside of her had given him the strength to live again.

Could she use that same strength now with Five? It wouldn’t need to be as much – no, Vanya realized it _couldn’t_ be as much. She was panicky when she found Harlan, reacting on instinct, and her powers had been barely controlled. Harlan was already dead, so at the time it hadn’t mattered.

She looked over at Five. He was still alive, but so fragile.

Sometime in the last few minutes she realized he had begun mumbling incoherently again, small whines escaping from his lips as his muscles began twitching again. Vanya knew she needed to act fast, before the twitching built up to another violent spasm.

Could she do this?

It would be a delicate balance.

There were so many things that could go wrong.

_Maybe this isn’t a good idea._

Vanya chided herself. This was not the time to be timid. Five would never hold back using his powers – wouldn’t hold back anything, really - if he thought it could help his family.

And this time, neither would she.

It was only fair to try to give back a fraction of what he had given her.

Carefully, Vanya moved closer to Five, and listened to the sound of her body. She held his hand and her breath – a breath might be too loud. She just wanted a heartbeat. She latched onto the quiet _thump_ from deep inside her, shaping the energy it contained. Her power wanted to be a river of energy coursing through her, but she dammed it up, only allowing a trickle to flow through. She felt tingles course through her arms and then her fingers as she guided the power out through her hands and into Five’s.

She wanted just enough energy to fill his depleted reserves. To give him strength.

Or at least some comfort.

Five stirred slightly against the new touch. For a moment she felt the building tension subside.

Vanya let out the breath she didn’t remember she was holding.

Then, in the space of a heartbeat, it all went wrong.

Five’s face twisted in a horrible way, his chest heaving unevenly as he began gasping, choking on his own breath. A tremor jerked him onto his side, facing her, his knees drawing up to his chest and his hands pulling away from hers as if they were burned. 

Vanya immediately let go of his hands, fighting down the panic that rushed up within her. “Five! Oh God, Five, no. Five, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The words babbled out of her.

Five began thrashing in a violent spasm before she could dissipate enough energy to safely touch him. She was barely quick enough to catch Five by the shoulders before he flipped himself off the bed.

 _Oh god, what did I do?_ Vanya choked back a sob.

Time seemed to stop as she held him, his body rigid and trembling against her hands.

But almost as quickly as it started it was over. She felt his breathing slow, and the tension ebbed out of his body. Vanya helped guide his limbs back into the bed, rearranging them as comfortably as possible on the now scattered pillows. 

There was a small noise. Different this time. She looked over to see his eyelids flutter and his mouth twitch. A small seed of hope planted itself in Vanya’s chest because for the first time all night, she could see _Five._

His eyes blinked open, unfocused and vague at first. “Five!” Vanya cried, relief washing over her as she sank back into her chair. His green-grey eyes followed the sound of her voice and settled on her soft brown ones.

“Vanya?” He frowned. The sound came out as a croak, words slurring slightly. “ ‘r you real? ‘m not dreaming?” 

“Yes, Five, yes it’s me,” Vanya smiled tearfully. “I’m really here.” She reached for his hand again, pulling it towards her and holding his fingers lightly in her own. At first his cold hand recoiled from the touch. Then, she felt him overrule his own reaction and he clamped onto her hand, slender fingers intertwining with her own, anchoring himself to her.

“Good t’ see you, sis” he murmured. His lips twitched up as he let out a breath, uneven and shaky.

“Five, here, do you want some water?” He gave her a small nod. Vanya grabbed the cup that was sitting next to the bed with her left hand. Five hadn’t let go of her right, so her movements were clumsy as she tried to awkwardly position the straw for him to drink. He tried to grab the cup with his free hand, but his grip was wobbly and he almost knocked the cup out of her hand. Still, he eventually managed to suck down some water.

After she returned the cup to the table, she saw that his eyes had slipped back closed, his body radiating exhaustion. 

The pair were silent for a beat, each simply breathing in and out.

Vanya’s only warning was Five’s fingers going rigid in her grip. Then his eyes flew open, wide with fright. He gasped in a deep breath, and his body once again coiled up.

For a moment, Vanya panicked, thinking he was going into another fit. No – she realized this time the movements were purposeful - the deep frown on his face, his neck and arm muscles straining, wrestling for control. Five planted his free hand on the bed and shakily pushed himself upright.

“Five, no - no, what are you doing?” 

“Sparrows - Where’s Diego? How -” the words were cut off by a shudder that ran through him and his hand slipped, dropping him back against the pillows with a groan.

“Shit,” he cursed. “I – I got to –“ Five’s voice trailed off weakly, as if he couldn’t remember what he had to do. 

“Five, stop, stop - Diego’s ok.” Vanya tried to keep her voice level, soothing, even as she was biting down on her own emotions. She repeated the words once more. Five’s brow remained knitted in a tight frown, as if questioning the truth in her statement. She squeezed his hand again and nodded in a way she hoped was reassuring. “Five, he’s ok. I promise. Diego’s sleeping. But you need to rest now, too.”

Another beat of silence, then Five nodded and exhaled some of the tension from his body. Once again, his eyes closed wearily. Vanya reached up and brushed the hair away from his face. This time he didn’t flinch at the touch, but whether from acceptance or exhaustion she couldn’t be sure.

By now Vanya could practically feel the waves of lethargy washing over him, one after another. Sleep was _clawing_ at him, yet now that he was here, he fought to stay.

From the way that his breath hitched and his hands trembled, Vanya could see that it was taking all his strength to eke out a draw. 

_Five needs something. Thats why he's still here._

She searched her mind to think of what he would need - what she could give him. She didn’t want to risk using her powers again, not with how close a call it had been last time, not with how weak he already was. But she was terrified at the way he was draining his reserves in the futile struggle to stay awake. 

“Five, shh, it’s ok,” Vanya tried repeating the comforting words.

His mouth moved and he swallowed. He had abandoned the battle to open his eyes, instead screwing them tight in concentration. “Vanya - th’ – th’ f-” he fought to get the words out. “- f-family?”

A pang of understanding shot through her.

_Of course. He won’t let himself rest until he knows we’re safe._

“Oh, Five.” Vanya gave him a tearful smile. “It’s ok. We’re all here. Everyone’s here – Allison, Klaus, Luther, Diego. We’re all safe.”

Five didn’t answer, but a ghost of a smile passed over his face, and the sharp edges of his face relaxed. Vanya felt his hand give hers a small squeeze before his grip slackened. 

“Shh. It’s ok, Five. Rest now,” she repeated, gently carding her fingers through his hair.

He was silent for a time, and she thought he might be sleeping. But then she saw his mouth working once more. “Five?” She leaned close to hear him, his voice barely a whisper. “What is it?”

“Vanya,” he sighed into her name. “I was s’ppose…” his eyes fluttered halfway open and then shut a final time. “- ’posed to…to fix you.” With those words, the remaining tension in his body released and Five let himself slip back under.

Vanya closed her eyes and smiled. A gentle warmth spread throughout her body.

_Fix her._

Now there’s a thought.

 _Am I….fixed?_ She pondered the question.

She had barely had time to know she was broken before she lost her memories.

She had done terrible things, hurt so many people.

 _Maybe I don’t deserve to be fixed._ It wasn’t the first time Vanya had had that thought.

No, that wasn’t right, she decided. Five hadn’t given up on her. If he wasn’t going to give up on her, it wouldn’t be right for her to give up on herself _._

Five had believed in her, that she was a _person,_ not just a problem. So had Sissy. Her love had done much to bring Vanya’s world into sharp clarity, healing pieces that she didn’t know was broken. And Vanya knew that Sissy was still a bittersweet pain that she wasn’t nearly ready to deal with, a pain that would likely be with her forever. Along with Harlan, who had spoken to her even in his silence and reminded her how to take care of someone. Her heart ached with longing for her found family that she had lost.

But as much as it hurt, at least Vanya knew the emotions were _real._ She was glad to feel things - both good and bad. And it was ok because she knew she didn’t have to do this alone anymore. She had her family – her _brother -_ for the first time since she was thirteen years old. And things weren’t perfect, but they were together.

Vanya supposed that was as _fixed_ as anybody could ever hope for.

She smiled and leaned close to whisper. “You did fix me, Five. More than that. You brought us all together. We can be a family again.”

After a moment, she added, “And all the other stuff – you’ll figure it out, Five. I know you'll get us home. And I promise - this time I will be ready to help you.”

Vanya sat with Five, holding his hand and watching him sleep until the sun rose. In the soft light of morning, his features lost the last of their sharp edges, and she could see once again a boy, curled up in a blanket at the foot of her bed, book in hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo trying to write something a bit fluffier was interesting! I really wanted to show someone (finally) taking care of Five and... the rest kinda built itself around that. Hope it turned out ok for y'all.
> 
> Oh, hey - let's talk about Vanya a bit too....because I have opinions. Specifically, I'm frustrated with how she treats Five in both S1 and S2. She just keeps...blowing him off, which is a fucking weird way to treat your childhood best friend. They have a few conversations that don't go well and then she just kinda...disappears, gets fully absorbed by New Relationship Energy, and completely forgets about Five (ok ok in S2 she actually has amnesia so that's slightly more forgivable). But it's just heartbreaking that you can see how happy Five is to see her and then his face just slowly melts into frustration and despair each time. And yes, Vanya suffered terrible abuse as a child and is dealing with a lot of shit and deserves to be happy. All of the characters do and in no way do I want to minimize that complexity. (But damn girl, Five is trying SO HARD to connect with you!) 
> 
> So, to sum up, I think Vanya needs to come to some realizations on some things and take some responsibility for her actions. And...just show Five some freaking appreciation!!


	7. Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is probably the first time you’ve slept an entire night since Dad’s funeral, eh brother?” Klaus winked at Five. “Of course, it would take nearly dying to get you to take a goddamn nap, you overachiever.”

Five felt time _wobble.  
_

He reached blindly into the darkness, seeking something, anything, to grasp onto. 

His fingers tangled in two handfuls of silvery threads.

_Five... FIVE…_

The threads shivered and slipped in his grip.

Something broke loose.

Time began swinging like a pendulum. 

_Stupid proud old man…._

Back and forth. Back and forth.

One of Five’s hands slipped.

He curled the other one tighter.

_We’ve got you…_

A flash. Intense heat.

His hands were burning. Were charred and black.

He did not let go. _Could_ not let go. 

_Please be ok…_

The pendulum stopped.

The threads slipped away.

Five sank into the blackness.

\---

Klaus was bored.

“Soooo….Fivey, hmm, you’re still sleeping. Is this…good news? Bad news? Cuz, it’s been _hours_ since Vanya said you woke up.” Klaus leaned over as if to share a secret with his sleeping brother. “Personally, I wonder if she dreamed the whole thing.”

No response. Klaus didn’t really expect one.

Klaus's sigh belied the concern hiding behind glib words. “Well, the _good news_ is - at least you’re not shaking like an addict on the third day of rehab anymore.”

And that part was true. Vanya had reported that after Five briefly woke up, his fits and teleportation attempts had subsided. Though as the hours of Allison's and Diego's and now Klaus's watch passed, their excitement had been tempered by the fact that Five showed no more signs of regaining consciousness.

“This is probably the first time you’ve slept an entire night since Dad’s funeral, eh brother?” Klaus winked at Five. “Of course, it would take _nearly dying_ to get you to take a goddamn nap, you overachiever.”

Klaus had always found Five’s ability to _do things_ equal parts admirable and exhausting. Five had _always_ run around like the whole world was a video game mission and he was on his way to beat the big boss.

In contrast, Klaus spent most of his energy on… _not_ doing things.

Still, despite their differences, Klaus had always _adored_ Five. As kids they were night and day, orbiting around each other in a tangle of solidarity and opposition, fighting one moment and partnering up the next. Perhaps the thing they were most similar in was their tendencies to get the worst punishments from Reginald – Five for insubordination, usually, because nothing as insubstantial as _rules_ or _punishment_ could stop Five from doing what he wanted, and Klaus for, well, _avoiding his responsibilities_.

If he really thought about it, Klaus could probably admit that Five’s unwillingness to submit to Reginald’s authoritarian rule was more than a small part of the reason he was still alive.

The other being an apparent inability to _actually die_ , of course.

Those nights in the mausoleum had been… Klaus shuddered as the familiar yet always uninvited cold fear wormed its way up from the pit of his stomach. Klaus was never quite sure why Five started blinking into the mausoleum, but at the time he was too grateful for the company to probe too deeply into his brother’s intentions. Frankly, he had been desperate, and didn’t want to jinx himself any more than life had already done and take a chance on anything that could make Five’s visits stop.

Klaus had spent countless hours making up or, sometimes _borrowing_ progressively more and more ludicrous stories to entertain Five during his visits. Five would also bring things to entertain them - donuts that he had nicked from the shop, or books that he had stolen from Dad’s office or Ben’s room. But mostly Klaus passed the time by telling stories. Sometimes Five would nod off, his head drooping against Klaus’s shoulder in an exhausted haze.

Klaus would never sleep, but would sit in the dark, focusing on the _warm_ feeling of Five snuggled up against him, a feeling so deeply contrasted with the bone chilling cold of the stone that surrounded them. Counting Five’s slow, even breaths became a rhythmic balm against the wails of the undead.

Then Five was gone, and Klaus was alone with the ghosts.

“You were alone, too. And none of us knew it, eh?” Except the ghosts, of course. Klaus figured the apocalypse was _swarming_ with ghosts.

At least Five couldn’t hear them scream. 

Klaus smiled at his brother sadly, all pretenses dropping for a moment. “You and I…we’ve always been lost in one way or another, haven’t we?” he whispered.

“Of course, _one_ of us just has to be dramatic about it…” Klaus trailed off. The snark had returned more out of habit than anything else. From what Five had said the other night and even more than the words, the way he had said it - frustration and desperation and even _vulnerability_ coloring his voice - Klaus thought his brother had every right to be dramatic. More than the right.

“Uh, thanks for saving us again, by the way,” Klaus spoke to the air. “In case no one remembers to tell you that. Cuz you remember we’re all shit with emotions, right? Ben and I - ”

Klaus cut off his words with a squeak and closed his eyes. Ben was gone.

“Well, I guess it’s just you and me now, munchkin. At least you’re still a warm body, as opposed to _someone_.” Klaus couldn’t help looking over to the space that Ben used to occupy. “And since you are possibly the only person I know who can beat Ben in terms of covering up your _wonderful caring natures_ with inhuman levels of sarcasm and sheer -" Klaus searched in vain for an appropriate word. "-annoyingness, I _greatly look forward_ to the crap you are going to give me over the next seventeen years.”

Silence. For once, Klaus actually found himself wishing there was a ghost around.

“Well, Five, this conversation’s been a peach, but ugh, but can’t you just wake up already?”

But Five didn’t.

Until he did.

\---

“DIEGO!”

Five’s eyes flew open as the words shot out of his mouth. He wrenched his body up off the bed, only distantly noticing another figure on a nearby chair jerk awake at his shout.

Five didn’t have time to register details; his body was already moving. Or at least, he _wanted_ it to move, but his brain was running about ten paces behind, and trying to force his limbs to move was oddly like dragging a spoon through molasses.

Still, he muscled himself halfway off the bed before collapsing into the figure who had moved from the chair to crouch beside him.

Cool hands caught Five before he tumbled to the floor. “Whoa, whoa, hey there little buddy…where you trying to go?”

Klaus. Five looked up at the figure and realized it was Klaus. He blinked his eyes and tried to push Klaus to the side – he needed to get _moving -_ but his movements were still too uncoordinated and weak.

“Five, Five, hey now, Diego’s fine. Vanya didn’t tell you? She said she told you.”

Diego. Ok. _Diego was ok?_ Diego was ok. Five’s brain was still moving at the speed of soup.

 _Vanya?_

How long had he been asleep?

Five let Klaus guide his limbs back onto the bed. A few breaths later and he was able to piece together the basics. A failed recon mission with Diego and Luther. The Sparrows attacking in the alley. He was fighting with Ben and then he…wasn’t.

He must have teleported? No, he remembered with a jolt. He time traveled. That would explain the passing out, Five reasoned. And why his limbs and brain felt… scattered.

Well, at least he was putting his new skills to use.

With his mind mostly connected with his body by this point, Five did a quick self-assessment. He quickly realized that part of the scattered feeling was due to the apparent _lack_ of a headache. Throughout his body, sharp pains had been replaced by a more muted throbbing. And he was pretty sure someone had patched up some of his injuries, which he was grateful for if he didn’t think about it too much.

Despite the clinging lethargy, Five was surprised to find that he felt unexpectedly close to…normalish.

An exploratory deeper breath brought a physical memory with the inhale. Someone – touching his hair? The ghost of fingers intertwining with his own.

 _How long had it been?_ He supposed he knew the answer if he cared to count it out. Five shivered, and the tremble lasted long enough for Klaus to begin frowning at him.

“Five?” He turned to see Klaus peering intently at him. “Fivey?” he asked, drawing even closer. Five drew back, unconsciously retreating from his brother’s approach. “Are you ok? You’re not planning to have another seizure, right? Cuz as…fun as those have been…”

Klaus’s shrug was too forced to be casual.

Five sighed. It was time to figure out reality. “No, Klaus, I am not _planning_ to have another seizure. I – _oomph -_ ” Five’s breath was cut off by Klaus’s arms wrapping him in a giant bear hug, a surprise move that pulled Five’s torso off the bed and caused his arms to fling around like spaghetti.

 _Get off!_ Five’s walls slammed up and instincts screamed. _Too much, get away get away_. His body went rigid even as Five attempted to swallow the snarl already rising in his throat.

_Remember how he always needed touch._

Right. Dolores had always been better than Five at remembering these details.

This was Klaus, and he meant well. Still, it was…a lot for his body to handle.

“Klaus – Jesus Christ, Klaus… KLAUS!” Five struggled and then gave up on keeping his voice a measured calm, his noodly arms finally finding purchase against Klaus’s shoulders. “I’m awake - can you stop – stop manhandling me for a second?”

“Oh,” Klaus pulled away with obvious reluctance. “Yeah, sure, sure buddy. Whatever you need.” He turned his head but not fast enough for Five to miss the way his face fell slightly, the shine in his eyes retreating along with his smile.

 _Shit,_ thought Five. Klaus could be so sensitive. He just needed to detach himself from his brother, he hadn’t really meant to land a blow. The feel of arms wrapping around him, layered with the remnants of ghostly touch, and the fact that he had not only passed out but apparently had had multiple _seizures_ … It was just too much to process in his current state. Or ever.

Five took a breath and forced his features to relax. As a gesture of apology, he reached out his arm. “Help me sit up.”

The gambit worked, and Klaus gently reached around his brother’s shoulders. This time Five was able to suppress the urge to pull away as his brother helped maneuver him upright.

The move took more out of him than Five wanted to admit. He stifled a yawn. Despite the way his body felt more…healthy, he was still damn tired.

“Klaus, how long have I been asleep?”

“Hm, now…well, let’s see. It’s after lunch but before dinner. Vanya said you woke up earlier this morning, but then you were nighty-night again until now.” Klaus’s head tilted left and right as he did the math. “So, a day and a half?

 _A day and a half. Shit._ Five winced. He’d lost so much time. The Sparrows recon mission had been a complete waste. He was no closer to figuring out their timeline situation. He -

His train of thought was interrupted by Klaus talking again. “- and so before you woke up I was telling you that story you used to like – the one about the time traveling alien that saved the world with a screwdriver? You used to like that one – remember?”

Allowing himself a moment of distraction, Five’s face softened and his lips twitched up almost immeasurably. He _did_ remember liking that story. Klaus had always, always liked to tell stories. And even though Five would _never_ admit it - he loved to hear them.

In the apocalypse, he had desperately missed Klaus’s stories. The sound of his voice, mostly. Sometimes he would try to remember one to tell himself, but he was never as good as Klaus with the nonsensical nonsense and they came out flat. But as time passed, his memories of Klaus’ voice faded, along with everything else, until it was practically indistinguishable from his own.

_You missed Klaus so much._

It was true.

Five remembered feeling _devastated_ when he read the chapters in Vanya’s book about Klaus. Detailing the way he drifted apart from the family. His slide into addiction. She never really called it out explicitly, but by piecing together various elements, Five was pretty sure that Klaus had eventually left the Academy without a plan or a place to go.

Five had thrown the book down in frustration (and then immediately picked it back up and smoothed out the precious cover) once he realized that all his childhood efforts to keep Klaus sane had been futile.

Afterwards, Five had wandered aimlessly through the apocalypse wasteland surrounding the Academy. Wondering which streets his brother had walked down - or even slept on - only days before.

Klaus had… _given up_ on himself. Given _in_ to addiction.

Apparently none of their siblings had had any more success in keeping Klaus grounded than Five had. On his worst days, Five had ungraciously wondered whether they had even tried.

Multiplying Five’s frustration tenfold was that it was so fucking... _obvious_ that Klaus’s issues stemmed from the fact that he was _terrified_ of his powers. Ben notwithstanding, Klaus’s ability to see ghosts and hear them scream had always seemed like a terrible power to Five. And unfortunately the only thing that seemed to dull the noise were the drugs that had caused his brother so much of a different flavor of pain. 

So when Dad’s training plan had started to include locking Klaus in the mausoleum at night, Five had done the only thing he could think of, which was spend time with his brother. Blinking into the mausoleum late at night, Five would bring snacks and books and anything he could think of to help distract Klaus from his fear.

It had seemed to help. For a while

 _If I hadn’t left…_ It was a familiar refrain by now.

_Don’t go down that road, Five._

Dolores was right, of course, but that didn’t stop the guilt from sitting in Five’s stomach like a lump.

 _If only I had been there, maybe I could have made him learn some better coping skills,_ he thought back uselessly.

 _You’re here now_ , Dolores chimed in helpfully.

Five grimaced. He couldn’t fool himself into thinking _he’d_ ever developed healthy coping skills. If he was being honest, he barely knew how to hold himself together with what somedays felt like a diminishing supply of staples and string. He had no fucking clue how to help Klaus now - had no clue where to start. But he had a sneaking suspicion it would probably involve some sort of _people skills._

If _Ben_ hadn’t been able to help Klaus…Five didn’t stand a chance.

A pang of loss hit Five like a sledgehammer. God, he missed Ben.

And apparently, Ben had been _right there._ For _years._ Diego had even talked to him. But Five had missed out, and his brother was gone forever. He wasn’t exactly…angry at Klaus for lying about Ben – that wasn’t the right word. But Five would have given almost _anything_ for the chance to talk to Ben again.

_Klaus didn’t do it to hurt you._

_That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt_ , Five snorted.

_Ben is here, now._

_He’s_ not _Ben,_ Five retorted stubbornly. Whomever Reginald had adopted, whomever he had fought in the alley, he was _not_ Five’s brother.

“Five?”

Five realized he had been gone for far too long, and Klaus was again peering at him again with a concerned frown. He shook himself from his thoughts. Klaus was here _now,_ and he had too many things to deal with to get buried in _what-ifs_ or _could-have-beens._

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

Five didn’t know exactly what Klaus was referencing, but in any case the answer was a resounding _no_ , no he really didn’t. “We got ambushed by the Sparrows and apparently I time traveled Diego and I out of there. Doing that twice in the span of two days was apparently a bad idea and landed me –“ Five gestured to the bed. “- here. What else is there to say?”

“No, not that,” Klaus started to give Five a sympathetic look, and then blinked rapidly. “Wait, wait – you _time traveled_ again?”

“Of course, you moron. Why else do you think I passed out and my powers started glitching out?” Glitching out sounded slightly better than _seizures._

“Well, ok yeah, but –“ Klaus shrugged. “What I really meant was do you want to talk about, you know, the other day? In your room? When you had -” his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “- _emotions?_ ”

Oh. That topic. Wonderful. _Exactly_ what Five wanted to talk about. Maybe Klaus would bring his so-called _apocalypse addiction_ up next.

 _Stop pretending you are mad, Five. That was insightful on Klaus’s part. You_ know _he has a point._

Sure, fine. He might be a little obsessive about the _end of the world._ What else was he supposed to do? He kept focusing on the apocalypse _because it kept happening._

“Klaus, I don’t want to talk about it.” Five articulated through clenched teeth.

What did his brother expect him to say? That the ghosts now haunted Five just as surely as they ever did Klaus? That the mere _presence_ of his family reminded him of how much he had lost? How much of _himself_ he had lost? That he felt less like a person and more like a…collection of broken pieces, all jagged edges and sharp points? 

No. He couldn’t burden Klaus with that.

_You’ll have to let your siblings in at some point, Five._

Dolores was probably right. He would eventually have to figure it out. But he just…wasn’t sure how. Forty-five years was too long. A lifetime separated him from his siblings now.

Five imagined what it would be like to open up to Klaus. He instinctively knew his brother would try to…help him. Incessantly. Like Five was a puzzle to be put back together with jokes and stories and _empathy_.

It was a recipe for failure.

_You know Klaus would try anyway._

He did.

Five both hated and loved Klaus for it. 

He shook his head at the confusing swirl of thoughts and emotions, which made the room spin dizzyingly around him and Five had to throw out an arm to catch himself before he wobbled himself right over. Despite the rest, he still felt depleted, and exhaustion was catching up to him quickly.

“Fivey, you feeling up to eating?” Klaus asked. “I can make waffles, or…” he trailed off, thinking. “I can ask Vanya to cook you up something.” Vanya was really the only one of them with decent kitchen skills.

Five wrinkled his nose and sighed. He was hungry, but the idea of food made him tired.

Seeing Five’s reaction, Klaus threw out a third option. “Or…a…sandwich?”

That actually...sounded good to Five. Plus, saying yes would get Klaus out of the room and give him a few more minutes to recover.

“Sure. And – thanks, Klaus.” Five threw a look that was _almost_ a smile at Klaus, who waggled his eyebrows and put his hands over his mouth in mock shock.

"Was that a _thank you_ I heard? From _Five?_ Oh, I _must_ go tell the others..." Klaus melodramatically danced out of the room as Five scoffed and rolled his eyes.

As his brother left, Five allowed his expression to turn to a small smile. It was _good_ to know that even after everything, Klaus was still Klaus.


	8. Spirits

Five had smiled at Klaus. A teensy-weensy one when he thought Klaus wasn't looking, but it had been there. _The Boy_ had actually _smiled._

 _Vanya must have used some kind of magic on you, Five-o_ Klaus mused as he wandered down the stairs towards the kitchen. Guiltily, he then remembered that Five likely had a concussion. To say the least. Brain injury would be be a less...fun explanation for his brother's relative cheeriness.

Still, seeing Five smile, even a secret smile, made Klaus happy. Five smiled _so_ rarely, and even less now than he had when he was younger, though in those days Klaus had usually been able to coax one out of Five with only moderate effort. Now? Heck, now Klaus had had more luck getting stodgy _Luther_ plaster one on his face than in getting Five to crack.

Klaus had always secretly taken pride in his ability to make his most serious siblings smile. Even though it sometimes took a lot of _work._ It was his one unique skill. He knew he wasn't good at most things. Not compared to his siblings. And he was ok with that...sorta. At least he'd accepted it long ago. Though, come to find out what he was apparently _very_ good at was manipulating people. Starting a cult had been an...interesting development. It wasn't _quite_ accidental, but Klaus couldn't say it was on purpose either. It was just one of those things that...happened. 

And then became _quite tedious._

Klaus had to admit that being back around his siblings (the currently alive ones, that is) and not around the clingy cultists was refreshing. And at least they were all _trying_ to get along this time, which was significant progress from the last time they were all together a few years ago. Even though it somehow kept devolving into fighting, this was the type of drama - Umbrella Academy drama - that Klaus knew how to deal with.

Ok, it was something he knew how to _avoid_ dealing with. Whatever. In any case, Klaus had tried to _avoid_ dealing with the missing part of him that was Ben by spending time with his other siblings and not thinking too hard about anything. And for once, they actually seemed to be...appreciating his attempts at solidarity. Klaus found it...well he didn't know the word for it, but it was nice. 

If he didn't think about it too much.

Klaus reached the threshold of the kitchen, humming to himself and with the intention to make his smiling-but-hopefully-not-brain-damaged-pint-sized brother the best damn sandwich he had ever tasted.

As he entered the room, Klaus's mood darkened immediately as he felt the air sucked out of his lungs by the glum look on Luther’s face. His largest but technically younger brother sat over a plate of food, his fork raised halfway in the air, not moving up or down. It was as if Luther had forgotten he was even holding it. 

“Uh, hey there, biggest brother o’ mine,” Klaus said by way of a greeting.

Luther looked up at him. “Oh. Hi, Klaus,” Luther’s voice mirrored the despondency on his face. His usually bright eyes were dull, and he was even a bit disheveled, like he hadn't slept for a few days.

 _Shit_ , Klaus thought. Was there a damn smile quota in this house now? Apparently so, and Five was using it all up. 

Klaus searched his brain for something that would cheer Luther up.

Oh. _Oh._

“Hey, so…guess who is awake,” Klaus had leaned over towards Luther, and subsequently had to jump back quickly to avoid a clattering chair as Luther jumped out of his seat a _bit_ faster than Klaus anticipated.

“He is?” Luther asked, his face brightening with something between hope and trepidation.

 _Awww, he looks like a puppy_ , Klaus thought. “Yes…” he confirmed. “And I’m gonna – “

“I’ve got to talk to him,” Luther interrupted Klaus and was running for the door before the words passed his lips. The floorboards creaked and shook upon his exit. 

"Ohhhh...kay?" Klaus said to the air.

That was weird. 

Shrugging, he turned back to the kitchen. “Okay, Fivey,” he muttered to himself. “What does a fifty-eight year old want on a sandwich?” Searching his memories, the only sandwich Klaus could remember Five eating were those sickly sweet peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

Did old people even eat marshmallows?

Klaus hemmed and hawed as he scoured the contents of the kitchen. They had stocked up at the local market yesterday, so there was a good selection of choices, though the marshmallow question was moot since they didn’t have any anyways.

“What does one feed a fifty-eight year old teenager, hmmmm,” he muttered as he rifled through the refrigerator. They did have peanut butter, so Klaus spread some thickly on a slice of sourdough bread. Then, he thought better of it and dragged out the toaster and threw a couple slices in while munching on the slice he had already made. He found several types of jelly and preserves. “Five, you seem like a …cherry jam type of guy to me,” he spoke to the jars while waiting for the bread to finish toasting.

Looking around, Klaus also found some gourmet chocolate chip cookies. Those should make up for the lack of marshmallows, he thought as he piled them on the plate with the sandwich once it was completed.

With a flash of inspiration, Klaus also started brewing some coffee and put some milk in a glass.

There. That looked pretty tasty. Pleased with himself, Klaus put it all on a tray and headed back upstairs.

**\---**

Five must have dozed off while waiting for Klaus, because he was jolted back to reality by Luther darkening the doorway.

“Jesus _Christ,_ Luther, why the hell are you lurking in the door like that?” Five’s jab was in lieu of a welcome as he maneuvered himself to sit up again. Luckily, that was getting easier. He had always been a fast healer; all of them were. Being able to bounce back quickly from injuries was a key skill for a successful superhero. And apocalypse survivor. And assassin.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” Luther replied, but didn’t elaborate further. His eyes were wide but he was clearly avoiding making eye contact with Five.

 _Luther looks like an overgrown puppy_. 

Five agreed, but kept quiet because it was the type of thing that sounded kinder when Dolores said it.

“Do you…want to talk about something, Luther?” He fervently - but also he suspected futily - hoped that Luther wasn’t there to interrogate him. Parrying Klaus had been enough. 

Why did _every_ interaction with his siblings have to involve deflecting yet another conversation that he wasn’t ready for? 

_These conversations are long overdue, Five._

It really was the peak of irony, Five thought. When he had been warning them about the apocalypse, no one wanted listen to him. But _now,_ his siblings couldn't seem to leave him alone.

Luther looked at Five, then looked at the chair by the bed, then looked at Five again. Five kept his expression neutral except for a raised eyebrow. He waited a beat, watching Luther shuffle his feet. 

Finally, he sighed. “Luther, would you please sit down and tell me what the hell is going on before I _actually die_ of old age?”

At Five's words, Luther took three giant steps over to the chair and sat down. He stared at his feet for a breath, then looked up. Still, he said nothing, just resumed staring at Five with that... _sad puppy_ expression. 

_Well, this is going nowhere fast,_ Five thought at Dolores. “Luther, what the hell - ”

Five didn’t get the words out before Luther interrupted him. “Five, I’m sorry.”

What.

Five blinked in confusion.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you, and I’m sorry I gave you a hard time the other night.” Luther's words were getting louder and faster. Five made to respond but Luther continued before he could form words. “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time about Dad. I’m sorry I threw you off a balcony. And - that I was a terrible spotter.”

Five’s mouth worked its way open and then closed again. He stared at Luther, confusion ultimately chasing away the other emotions that didn’t have time to land on his face. Luther’s face, on the other hand, had mixed a new level of despondency into its puppy dog earnestness.

“Luther, I…You…I...I don’t want you to.…” In his confusion, Five was struggling to form a complete sentence. He shook his head, and waved his hand at his brother to brush him off instead. 

Honestly, he couldn’t fathom why Luther was apologizing to _him._ Sure, Luther was a dumbass and his actions over the last few weeks had been incredibly frustrating, but it’s not like Five was going to…stop trying to save the family. 

_Luther cares about you, Five. He doesn’t think you know that._

“Shut up, Five.” 

Five raised an eyebrow, mostly at Dolores. They both knew the directive wasn’t mean. 

_Luther's got some spunk to him lately._

_Maybe I should kick him in the balls more often,_ Five thought back.

“Five, for once it isn’t about what you want. This is important. I need you to listen to me.”

Ok. If he ignored the idea that _any of this_ was what he _wanted,_ Five could work with that. Because this - whatever this was - was important to Luther. And if it was important to Luther, it was important to Five. Though he wished Luther would just spit it out and stop making it _awkward as hell._

“I’m…” Luther looked up and around, as if searching for words. Or the courage to say them.

Five simply watched Luther as he closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the Number One you all needed me to be. Not - not _Dad.”_ He emphasized the word. “Fuck Dad.”

Five chuckled. Out loud this time, despite himself. Whatever he had been expecting Luther to say, it certainly wasn’t _Fuck Dad._

Luther continued. “You, Five. You and the others. I’m sorry I wasn’t the leader you needed me to be. The leader you all deserved.”

Luther’s face turned into a tight smile. “I was angry at you, Five. You came back, sounding so much like…like Dad. Disappointed. Angry. Focused on the mission. And I – I didn’t want to deal with that.” 

Five grimaced. Luther’s words stung, but there was more than a grain of truth to it. He didn't want to be like Reginald, he _really_ didn't. But there were always more important things at stake than whether he was making his siblings _comfortable._

Five missed a few words with those thoughts but caught the end as Luther was winding down. “ - and I’m sorry I caused the apocalypse.”

What?

Luther had Five’s attention again, with his…absolutely preposterous statement.

Why the hell did Luther think he caused the apocalypse?

But before he could follow that train of thought any further, Klaus waltzed through the door "...and I've got cookies, and coffee and..."

"KLAUS," Luther cut his brother off with a frown and a shout. Klaus froze in the doorway. "Just...give us a minute, will you?"

"O...kay...." Klaus backed out of the room slowly. Five made a strangled sound as he saw Klaus was taking the tray with _coffee_ on it with him.

But Luther was staring at Five, almost pleadingly again. A look that Five couldn't ignore. So he gave a silent farewell to the idea of coffee (for now) and turned back to his brother. 

"Luther – I – Luther what the hell?" he sighed in resignation. "Luther, why do you think you caused the apocalypse?”

Luther hung his head for a moment, and then returned to look Five in the eye. “Because of how I treated Vanya. I locked her away in a cage – just like Dad used to do. She trusted me and I tricked her and I…broke her. And she’s better now, I think, but still – I broke her.”

Five tried to speak again but Luther had apparently gotten a second wind and wasn’t stopping. “And I apologized to her and I think we’re ok – she’s ok -”

 _Good. That's good._ Five felt tangible relief at that. He knew that Luther and Vanya had made up somehow, but it still felt good to hear it confirmed. 

“ - but I didn’t apologize to you.”

Five jerked his head up and shot Luther a bemused look. Luther returned it with a sincere stare. “I’m sorry, Five. I’m sorry that I caused the apocalypse. And I’m sorry that you had to live there for so long.”

A cacophony of thoughts swirled through Five’s head. Luther thought _he_ was the reason Five was stuck in the apocalypse?

How long had his brother been holding onto that nonsense?

_He doesn’t understand the implications of time travel, my dear. Did you ever try to explain it to them?_

No, no he had not.

Trying to discuss _actual topics critical to their survival_ with his siblings had been enough of an exercise in frustration. Trying to explain time travel theory had just never…made the priority list.

_Well, maybe now’s a good time, dear. Remember Luther was always good at math. Maybe he can help you._

Five sighed. Fine. God, Luther was still staring at him with that puppy dog look. He had no idea how they had gotten into this mess, and even less idea how to extract himself from it. Judging that saying _something_ was probably more important than saying the right thing, he decided to appeal to logic. "Luther, listen to me. You didn’t cause the apocalypse – well, squeezing Vanya like a grape didn’t exactly help matters,” Five amended, but continued hastily before Luther’s face fell _all_ the way to the floor. “Look, let’s just agree…we would have _all_ done things differently had we known."

Five paused to make sure his brother heard the next words. "But my point is that you didn’t cause the apocalypse that _I_ got stuck in.”

Luther blinked his eyes in confusion.

Five scowled at Dolores. This was _not_ going to be as easy as she thought. 

Five continued. “At least, I don’t think you did. Look…there’s separate timelines, right? And we’re clearly not in the same timeline that we started in. Every time we make a change…well if the change is big enough, it can branch off a new timeline. I’ve been working on figuring out the details of this since 2019 – the last time,” he added. 

Luther pursed his lips and was clearly thinking hard. “So, it’s like when you gave the older…er _younger_ version of yourself the right calculation to go back in time so he doesn’t end up like…” Luther gestured in the vague direction of Five.”

_Five! You didn’t tell him that, either?_

Five smirked. “I, uh, _may_ have not been…entirely truthful about that.”

“Oh. So you didn’t know how to fix the equation?” Luther asked, puzzled.

“Oh, I did…” Five raised his eyebrow, articulating each word for emphasis. “But no fucking way was I going to give it to that asshole. He can rot in his teenage body just as long as I will.”

Luther stared at Five in horror for a second, then burst out laughing. “Serves him right, I guess. He was kinda a dick.”

“Yeah, he really was, wasn’t he?” Five scoffed in a way that could almost be mistaken for a chuckle.

Luther’s laughter cut off suddenly. “Uh - I…I told him about Vanya. And the eye. What’s that going to do the timeline?

Five shrugged. “No helping it. There was going to be a new branch of the timeline anyway as soon as we walked into that bar.”

Luther frowned.

“It’s not necessarily bad,” Five continued. “Shit, it may mean that we actually prevent the apocalypse in that one. If I had known Vanya was the cause…well I’d certainly do things a lot differently.”

Luther thought about that while Five moved on to more immediate concerns. “So, that brings me back to my point about the apocalypse. Remember Dad always said we were training to save the world, to stop the apocalypse.”

“Which we didn’t.” Still a sore spot for Luther.

“We didn’t. But my point is remember that Dad can’t time travel - ” Five cut himself off, realizing that he realized he didn’t actually have proof either way about that. Internally sighing – why was everything always so _complicated -_ he continued. “So how did Dad know the apocalypse was going to happen? And if he knew it was going to happen – why did he do what he did to Vanya? He should have _at least_ made the connection in some way between her powers and the apocalypse. But if that was the case, _why did Dad keep Vanya around at all?_ Why did he set the conditions _just right_ for her to explode?”

Luther frowned at that.

Five rubbed the back of his neck. “See, here’s the thing. I don’t think the apocalypse he expected – the one I lived in – was caused by Vanya. I think he was expecting – preparing us for – a different apocalypse. But something must have changed. I think - I think Dad had to change his plans to adjust for something new.”

“Wait, what?” asked Luther. The panicky confused look had returned.

“I don’t know for sure,” Five admitted. Every time he thought he had something figured out, there was another wrinkle, another piece that he had to rework. He was actually disappointed in how little progress he had made in figuring out _anything_ about Reginald, so he punted again. “It doesn't matter, right now, anyway. This timeline is entirely different. New timeline, new apocalypse - maybe. Or not."

"A _new_ apocalypse?"

Five had no answer to that, so he ignored Luther. "God, I can't believe we fucked up enough for Dad to _literally_ unadopt us.” 

“But he still got Ben...”

“Ben wasn’t at the disaster dinner, if you recall. No, he only got to see all of _our_ sideshow acts." Five tried to keep the saltiness out of his voice for Dolores's sake. If they had only been able to _hold it together for_ one _meal…._

“Fuck. So what does this mean, Five? What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, dumbass. I haven't had enough _time_ to think about it yet." And he really hadn't. It was unsettling to have no idea what to do next. He really could use some coffee. Or something stronger.

“Did you learn anything the other day in the alley?” Luther asked, hopefully. “I saw two of the Sparrows disappear after you and Diego. Diego remembers Ben was there, with another Sparrow, but not much else useful.” 

“No, no, not really,” Five shook his head. “I mean Diego found out first hand that one of the Sparrows is a fucking green cube that shoots laser beams, so there’s that,” he said offhandedly, rolling his eyes at the memory of that disaster of a mission. “The Sparrows are a mystery. I don’t know what side they are on,” _I don’t know what sides exist, yet_ , he admitted to himself. “But for now we need to treat them as dangerous. We need to be prepared. I assume you guys have been at least posting lookouts?"

Luther nodded.

"Good," Five said, and he felt the tide of the conversation change. He was tired of waiting for Klaus to come back. "Alright, is everybody still here? We should have a family mee- oomph!" Five had swung his legs off the bed experimentally, and his words were cut off by a wheeze as he suddenly tipped over at a forty five degree angle.

Luther immediately scrambled over closer. “Five? What are you doing? You should stay in bed.”

“I’m not an invalid,” Five grumped, pushing Luther away. The statement was…sort of true. He was pretty sure he could stand up without falling in a heap, he just needed to take it slow. He tried again this time moving slowly and methodically and was pleased when his body responded with an additional measure of coordination. 

He had certainly worked through worse. 

“Wait, uh, there’s something else.” Luther frowned and took a breath.

Five rolled his eyes.

“Look, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time the other night. But goddamn it, Five, you’ve got to learn to work with us. We’re the Umbrella Academy. Again. No small part in thanks to you. But if we’re going to do this – and if you’re going to be a part of it – then you need to work with us. Talk to us. _Stay_ with us. No more disappearing, Five.”

Five was somewhat surprised to find that those words…stung. Even more than being told he was acting like Dad. 

Five felt an almost overwhelming urge to tell Luther to fuck off, but bit back on the words. Because as much as he hated to admit it, Five knew Luther had a point.

He had _always_ worked alone. For over four decades he had _been_ alone, and then even at the Commission he had absolutely no interest in teammates. He insisted on solo missions. It was easier that way and gave him more time to work on his equations. Besides, working alone meant Five was able to improvise, which made him _extremely_ effective.

And ok, he probably could be better at working with his siblings. But they were just so goddamn impossible. Even when he asked for _help,_ his siblings more often than not had just caused more problems for him. How much had Five _begged_ and _pleaded_ for them to work together over the last few weeks? 

_Luther is trying now, Five. He wants to help._

Fine. Even Five could admit that his judgement had been a bit…off kilter over the last few weeks. He was _tired._ So _tired._

“Sooo….” Luther was clearly uncomfortable with the silence that had descended over the room as Five's attention had shifted to Dolores. “Good talk, Five. Hey, how about you stay here, and I’ll bring you a sandwich. Or figure out where the hell Klaus went,” Luther muttered.

Five’s scowled but nodded. "Bring. Coffee."

Luther nodded in return, his lips pressed tightly over his teeth.

"And you should wrangle up the other deadbeats around here. Like I said, we need to have a family meeting. In an - " Five was cut off again, this time by a yawn. "In an hour."

“Two hours,” Luther countered, looking his brother up and down. “You still look like, uh, well, like you could use another nap.”

Five grimaced. Now that his brain was working again his to-do list was as long as ever and staying in bed seemed untenable. He meant to give Luther a nod, but instead it turned into another yawn. 

_You need to rest, Five, or you'll be no use to anyone._

Fine, then. Five guessed a few hours probably wouldn’t make _that_ much difference.

Luther returned the nod, and then got up and walked over to the door.

Shit. Five’s insides twisted. Something wasn’t right. 

He didn't even know someone could make a _walk_ look dejected, but Luther was someone doing it.

_Tell him._

Five sighed.

“Luther?” he called out, stifling another yawn as his brother was halfway out the door.

Luther paused and turned back to Five, his posture slouched more than necessary to fit his large stature in the door frame.

“I’m not angry at you, Luther. And I’m sorry, too.” Five spoke slowly and poured as much sincerity as he could muster into his voice. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when – when I should have been.” Five held Luther’s eyes at these last words, hoping his brother would pick up on all he meant to say, because he damn sure didn't feel like elaborating. 

_And…?_

"And…" he sighed. "I'll try to do better, alright? We _all_ could use a refresher in...working together. As a team."

Luther held Five’s gaze for a beat, eyes crinkled and kind with a smile. Then, he nodded, and turned away. Even from his position on the bed Five could see his brother’s posture straighten noticeably as he walked down the hall.

Five closed his eyes and huffed as he tried once again to organize his thoughts.

He had work to do.

\---

Unseen by either brother, a small sparrow had stood uncharacteristically still on the ledge outside the window. The bird cocked its head to the side - once, twice. Its eyes followed the larger man as he left the room, and then as a second long haired man brought a tray to the boy sitting on the bed. It watched the boy grab the cup and sandwich off the tray, then watched the other man leave. Finally, it watched the boy finish his meal, close his eyes, and fall back asleep.

The small bird hopped over to the edge of the ledge, spread its wings, and flew into the night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is the song Spirits by The Strumbellas, because I feel like it vibes with all these kids so much.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading!!


	9. Right Back Where We Started From

A sandwich, a nap, and a shower later, Five was sitting cross legged on his bed, muttering to himself and scribbling equations in a notebook when Klaus came back in with more coffee. He looked up, frowning a little at the curiously hopeful smile on Klaus's face. 

“Hey there, little-big bro…” Klaus began, holding out the coffee enticingly. 

Five narrowed his eyes. _Why was Klaus trying so hard?_

 _Why do you have to be so suspicious?_ Dolores retorted.

He just… honestly Five didn't know how to answer that. His experience with people being _nice_ was practically non-existent. He had spent the last four and a half years working for an organization that specialized in temporal assassination. No one there was ever _nice_ without a motive. And then, these last few weeks with his family, well he had spent most of that time corralling them, and it had been exhausting. Every sibling seemed intent on doing exactly the _opposite_ of what Five wanted - what Five _needed_ to keep his family alive. 

Yet deep down, he did appreciate that Klaus was trying. Had been, all day. A distant, desperate part of him even wanted to talk to his brother, to flare the spark of familiarity that was blossoming between them. 

In theory, it was a great idea. In practice, it was… complicated.

_It won’t get less complicated by ignoring it, Five._

He’d only been awake for a few hours but Five was already reeling from the crushing weight of his to-do list. He sighed and mentally added another item: _Figure out how to rekindle relationship with least annoying brother._

“So, whatya got there?” Klaus asked, leaning over to peek at Five’s scribblings. "Does my brilliant brother have a way to get us home yet?"

“No, well - I don’t know yet,” Five admitted. “The equations are frustrating. There’s too many variables..” He rubbed the back of his neck absently and stretched out his spine. “We made so many changes in the timeline and I can’t be sure I'm accounting for them all." 

Silence. 

More silence.

Five looked over to Klaus. His gaze was far away and he was absently fingering the dog tags around his neck. 

"Klaus?" Five probed.

Klaus started and looked over at Five. "Oh, yeah. Changes. Mmhm, that's great."

Clearly not. Five put his notebook to the side and turned towards his brother. “Klaus, what's going on?" 

"Oh, nothing.” The words came out as a sigh and the far away look returned. “Just wondering if a certain someone found another party boy in the jungle to look after him. I wonder if he was happy."

Oh. Of course. Klaus was mourning his lost love - what was his name? Five struggled to recall, though he was sure he had heard it mentioned. Dick? Dan?

 _Dave. His name was Dave._ Dolores was always better at these things. 

"Have you tried to conjure Dave? Talk to him?"

Klaus laughed bitterly. "And talk about what? _Paint?_ He thinks I'm a fucking cult leader, Five." He shook his head. "No, Dave - my Dave - is gone. At least - at least as long as we are here. He’s as gone as Ben is. At least - our Ben. Not that other....” his voice trailed off. 

Five’s lips flattened and stretched in a thin line of agreement. There was nothing of their missing brother in this timeline; he could feel it even before the new Ben attacked him with the Horror. Apparently Klaus felt the same. 

It clicked so suddenly that Five had to draw in a hitching breath, closing his eyes and swallowing to push back the lump rising in his throat.

The far away look. Why he was trying so hard. Klaus felt _lost_ without Ben. 

Klaus and Ben had been together for seventeen years. A secret companion, something Five was intimately familiar with. He remembered the times when he had to leave Dolores to go on one mission or another, and the _ache_ that suddenly being alone could bring. Worst was the fear of being alone. Forever.

“You miss Ben.” Five said simply. 

Klaus nodded, his eyes wet and glassy. “Ben’s been…well you weren’t there, of course, but Ben’s been with me since his funeral. Seventeen years with someone is a long time. You know that, though, right.” 

“And, well, Ben could be an _asshole_ but he was my asshole.” Klaus closed his eyes and took a long breath. “I knew I would have to let him go someday, I guess. I hope he’s happy. I hope both of them are.” 

Klaus opened his eyes and regarded Five. “And, hey, I’m glad you’re back, Five. We all are, you know?” 

Five found himself doubting that. He wanted to believe Klaus. He _really_ did. But he had been here for weeks - longer from his siblings' perspective, and well, _chilly_ might be a kind word for the reception he had received. Sure, Klaus and Luther had been rather brotherly over the last few hours, but that could be chalked up to them realizing the slim hope their family had of getting home without Five. 

They _needed_ him, he knew.

But did they _want_ him?

Was Klaus really glad that Five was back? Or was he simply trying to replace the loss of a loved brother with the next best option? 

_Does it matter?_

Again, Five didn’t have an answer.

Eventually, the silence became too much and Klaus shook his head and smiled wryly at Five. “So, I heard Benticles attacked you and Diego on that mission? How was that, eh?” Klaus sighed again and looked down at his hands. "And Luther had to play lookout. I’m sure he loved that. Well, never fear, now that I can’t summon Ben my powers are pretty much useless, so I guess I’ll be taking my old job back. I’d be more than happy to take one for _Team Zero._ ” Klaus pumped his fist once sarcastically. 

Five frowned in confusion - not at the _Team Zero_ jab (what had Diego been thinking to come up with that god-awful name?), but something about Klaus's comment that didn’t add up. 

“What the hell do you mean, your only useful power?” 

“Oh come on, Five. You know that my powers are pretty much craptastic. Except as stuff of nightmares, ya know.” he muttered, and flexed his hands in a familiar gesture.

Five's from deepens as he absently put down the coffee. Exasperated, he asked, “Klaus, what are you talking about? Your powers aren’t useless. You can literally summon armies of the dead.” 

Klaus blinked in surprise at Five’s words. Frowning at Five, he reached out a hand towards his face. “A what now? What armies? Are you sure you’re feeling better, Fivey?”

Five batted the hand that was suddenly trying to feel his forehead away. “I’m fine,” Five automatically replied, absently picking back up the coffee and thinking hard. Why was he always having to explain everyone’s powers?

Oh. 

Oops. 

_Shit._

In all the madness of the last two weeks, Five hadn’t actually told his family what he had seen in the Soviet apocalypse timeline.

_This is why you need to talk to your siblings, Five._

He stared up at the ceiling in exasperation. Not only was he responsible for saving their _lives,_ but apparently he was _also_ responsible for spoon feeding them information while doing it. 

_You know that's not fair, Five._

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. Five didn’t care enough to sort it out. 

_Why is everything always my responsibility? It's not like any of them have shown any interest in_ my _life._ _Or even any self-preservation about their own._

_Just because they are wrong doesn't make you right._

He really didn’t feel like pursing a spiraling argument with Dolores so he gave in. 

And it was _fine._ It really was. It’s not like Five _wanted_ to talk about his time in the Apocalypse anyway. How does one even describe being alone for longer than someone had been _alive?_ Five didn’t want to talk about his time in the Commission, either. There were no good memories there. Still, in his copious dreams and frenetic hopes about returning home, Five had never anticipated being so… marginalized by his family. 

He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter – that what mattered was that his family was _alive._

Whether or not _Team Zero_ had a place for _Number Five_ didn’t matter. 

Or did it?

Was this how Klaus had felt in the Umbrella Academy? Marginalized? 

The empathy surging up from that realization made Five’s voice gentle as he started to explain. “Klaus, I saw you -” Five took a moment to gather his thoughts. “- I saw you summon armies of the dead in 1963 –”

Klaus looked like he was going to go for Five’s forehead again so he quickly amended his statement as he ducked. “- in the _apocalypse_ version of 1963, dumbass. The one where you died.” Five choked a bit more than he expected on those words and had to look away, pretending to clear his throat. 

“All of you – you had new powers, or at least more powers than I’ve seen from you. I thought _you_ would have known, but apparently not.” 

“Oh wow, really? _I_ did that?” Klaus looked intrigued, looking down at his fists in confusion. Five thought this might be the first time he could recall Klaus being interested in his powers. “So how did I do that?”

“I don’t actually know,” Five admitted. “But _you_ did. So it can’t be _that_ hard.” The good-natured jab did much to lift the mood in the room, and somewhat surprisingly, Five’s own spirits. 

But he didn’t quite duck fast enough this time and Klaus’s next playful slap caught him on the side of the ear. Klaus lunged for him, but Five slipped underneath the attack and ended up standing on the floor looking down at his brother. “Come on, the others should be downstairs by now. Apparently we have even _more_ to talk about.”

\---

Five could feel the tension in the room as he looked at his siblings spread across the living room furniture. He didn’t know if it was because Luther had briefed them on his earlier discussion with Five, or just a general response to the continued uncertainty and exhaustion from the last few days. Diego looked particularly irritated as he fidgeted with his favorite knife.

Well, there was no use delaying the inevitable. “Alright, let’s get started,” Five said. “First off, I’m sorry about the other night. I know I acted… weird.” As a concession to Dolores’s insistence that he open up to his siblings, he added, “The last few days - weeks - well, they’ve been a lot. For me. For all of us.”

He saw various gestures and several of his siblings opened their mouths to talk, but impatience got the better of Five and he continued on before they could form replies. “But that’s not why we’re here. Unfortunately, like always, the Umbrella Academy has several things to deal with.” He brought up his hands and was about to begin ticking things off on his figures when a muttered interruption caught his ear. 

“ _Team Zero_ , Five. We’re Team Zero now.”

Five rolled his eyes. What a stupid name. A surge of annoyance flooded his system. “Fine, Diego, you know what? I don’t care. What I _do_ care about is that we’re currently stuck in a timeline that isn’t our own. And I’m guessing none of _you_ have made any progress in figuring out how to get back to our own timeline.”

“Can we jump back, Five?” Vanya asked. “Maybe use the briefcase this time?” 

“Oh yeah, because Five jumping us around has _always_ turned out well,” Diego retorted, finally looking up from his knife. “Apparently even with a briefcase, we ended up in the wrong timeline.”

Great. This was off to a _fantastic_ start. “Hey, numbnuts,” Five aimed at Diego with an underlying message of _shut the fuck up._ “The briefcase worked perfectly fine. _We -”_ and he made an encompassing gesture with his hands, “-just fucked up this timeline before we left. Something I thought you would have _understood_ given your apparent expertise with the Infinite Switchboard.”

“Shut up, Five,” Diego shot back, and Five knew his point had scored. “Unless you want to go into details about the mess _you_ made at the Commission?”

Luther cut in before Five could reply. “Hey, Diego, Five. Stop it. We just agreed to work as a team, _remember?”_

Both brothers rolled their eyes at Number One. 

“Can we get back on topic, please?” Five would be _damned_ if he was going to lose the initiative this early in the conversation. 

“So, I _think_ I can get us back -" he saw Allison’s face light up at this, obviously thinking of her daughter she hadn’t seen in years, “- but I need more information. And -" This was the part that wasn’t going to go well. But the more he thought about it, Five knew that Reginald was the most likely source of the information he needed. “- I think I need to talk to Dad.”

“NO!” The collective shout made Five’s ears hurt. He winced as the room descended into grumblings. 

“Five, what are you talking about?” Luther demanded, still in his _Number One_ voice. “You almost got yourself _killed_ by the Sparrow Academy just a few days ago.”

Five rolled his eyes at his brother’s insinuation. “I didn’t almost get myself _anything_. But _Diego_ wouldn’t listen to me and _did_ get himself killed. And once again - I got the _pleasure -"_ Five's sneer was almost feral, a sharp jab aimed at Diego even as the thought of what he had done threatened to suffocate him. "- of fixing _your_ screw up, _Batman_."

Diego’s mouth curled up and he lunged towards his brother. He was fast, but Luther had expected the move and easily caught Diego securely in one arm. He looked at Five, and the message was clear. 

_You promised to try, Five._

He had. So he screwed his eyes shut and forced himself to take a calming breath. Looking up, he nodded at Luther.

And of course, in true Hargreeves fashion, his once-ally immediately stabbed him in the back. “Five. I’m adding an item to your agenda. Your self-preservation skills. Or should I say lack thereof.” Five rolled his eyes again.

Allison joined in with a more practical yet equally annoying question. “We figured out that you blinked Diego out of the alley, Five. Did you blink too much? Is that what caused your seizures?” 

_Seizures._ The word tasted like bile in Five’s throat and the sneer returned in full force. So much for calm. “I did more than _blink._ Like I said, Diego here _was actually dead._ Gone. Kaput. No more Number Two.” The sarcasm burned, and its fire helped Five push down the sickening memory of Diego’s blank eyes staring up at him. “Once again, I had to turn back time to save his sorry ass. And apparently, my body _does not like doing that twice in two days._ So it would be great if all of you could _please_ avoid dying for a while.”

An expected beat of silence as his siblings processed the information. Then like clockwork, the questions started flying at Five. He shook his head, ignoring them all. “Look, we already covered this the other day. Time travel. Seconds, not decades. You know the rest. Can we please get back to relevant topics?”

But Diego was relentless. "Fine. I screwed up. Is that what you want to hear?" He took another step towards Five, but was again blocked by Luther, who tightened his grip on Diego's arm.

“But you -” he pointed a finger towards Five. “I call bullshit. You _just_ admitted you don’t know your limits. So stop giving _me_ crap about being reckless, when you go off and put yourself in danger whenever you feel like it!”

Five’s reply was cut off by a shout from Luther. “Guys, stop it!” Luther’s face was red with anger and frustration at the situation that was quickly spiraling out of control. He took a beat, then tried again to be diplomatic. “Five, I know. I’m sorry. We’re not trying to give you a hard time." He gave a pointed look at Diego.

"I know we died, and that’s gotta be... hard. But, Diego’s got a point. You can be just as reckless as he is. Worse, actually.

Five turned his narrowed eyes towards Luther. “We’ve already been through this…and what do you expect me to do? I’m not going to let Diego die. I’m not going to let _any_ of you die.”

Couldn’t they see there was no point to _any_ of this if they died? 

With an effort, he extended an olive branch to family unity in the best way he knew how: by changing the subject. “Look, whatever, it’s done. It already happened. We just - we need to figure out how to deal with the Sparrows _next time._ And it’s not going to be easy. The Sparrows are good. Possibly better than us - we have to consider that.”

“Why Sparrow Academy, instead of Umbrellas, you know? I wonder what that means…” Vanya’s question trailed off.

“No idea, Sis,” Five admitted, grateful that at least someone was paying attention to the relevant topic. “Like I was _trying_ to say in point one, we have to learn more about them. But now -” Five took a deep breath to flush the adrenaline from his system. “- here’s where I have some good news. Klaus and I were talking upstairs and I realized -”

Klaus practically jumped out of his chair. He had been squirming for the last five minutes. Apparently his proverbial timer had gone off once Five got remotely close to the topic at hand. “Oh my god guuuuys -" Klaus's interruption came out as a squee. "- Five discovered we all have new special powers!"

Everybody turned to look at Klaus, disbelief plain on their faces. 

Well, at least everyone will be paying attention now, Five thought. 

He was right, as they all turned to look at Five and fired off a slew of questions. 

“Powers?”

“How do you know _we_ have powers?”

“Five, what aren’t you telling us, again?”

Five rubbed the back of his neck as the room descended into chaos. “So, alright, Klaus is right, ok? When I told you you all died – not in the barn,” he amended, as everybody was giving him a confused look. “The other time. In 1963. The apocalypse. I saw you there – all of you. You were fighting an army of Soviets. It wasn’t enough to stop the end of the world, but it was something. It may be enough to help us now.” 

Their mouths hung open. Allison was the first to speak this time. “Five, why didn’t you tell us this before? Like, anytime in the past week?”

Five rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time. “Well, _Allison_ , I was kinda busy with things that were relevant to actually _stopping_ the apocalypse. Since you know, what you tried didn’t actually work.” And for good measure, he added, “And it’s not like you guys would listen to me for more than five goddamn minutes at a time. This would all be a moot point if you had just met me in the alley in time.”

More grumblings at that. The words _Swedes_ and _Lila_ were thrown around. 

Excuses, all of them.

_Five, be kind. You knew it was an impossible deadline._

True. He had known. Still, he had to try, and he had used every trick in his book to convince his body and mind that things would work out. That they surely _had_ to work out.

Of course, they hadn’t.

As soon as he had seen Vanya drive away from him towards the farm, the full weight of hopelessness had descended upon Five. He had sat in the car, still for almost a full minute after she left, gripping the steering wheel in a futile effort to stop his hands from shaking. He had slaughtered an entire _room_ full of enemies, and it wasn’t enough. Nothing he would do would _ever_ be enough. His goal for almost half a century was within reach, yet kept slipping out of his fingers. In that moment, Five felt every one of his fifty-eight years weighing on him like stones. 

He was _tired._

Five shook himself from the memory and made his voice loud to cut through the conversation. “Alright, so will you all shut up so I can actually tell you what I saw?” The noise died down imperceptibly as at least _some_ of his siblings seemed to be paying attention. Five soldiered on. “Luther, you were almost invincible. I saw you hit with a mortar round and it was like…nothing. Like you were made out of steel. And you could fly.”

Luther smashed his brows in a quizzical expression. “Well, maybe it was that you could jump,” Five amended. “But it was really, _really_ high. Last I remember your limit was about…three stories?” Luther nodded. “This was _much_ higher.”

“Allison,” Five turned to his sister. “You used your powers in a way I had never seen before. You caused heads to explode. It was quite… gruesome.” He remembered some of the gore splattering his jacket like rotten fruit, despite being over half a block away.

Allison raised both eyebrows, her full attention now on Five. “I… _what now?”_

“Oh, shit, Allison, that’s so cool!” Klaus cheered his sister and offered a high five, which she promptly ignored. “And I…” Klaus had apparently decided not to wait for Five to get to him, and instead presented himself with a dramatic flail of his arms. “I summoned armies of the dead. I can finally put some of you suckers following me around to use!” 

Klaus pointed towards something ( _someone?)_ that no one else in the room could see as Five continued. “Diego, you turned away bullets like they were repelled – actually, you’re the only one I’ve seen do something that’s come close to that day,” Five frowned in recollection. “When you turned aside those bullets at the farm. How did you do that? How did you _know_ you could do that?”

Diego thought. “I’m - well, we were fucked. I just knew I had to do something. So I did.”

“You just... _knew_ how to do it?” Allison scoffed. “Like divine intuition?” 

Klaus had finished his conversation with a ghost and rolled his eyes at them. “Well, that’s _entirely_ helpful, Diego. So I just have to wait for the knowledge of how to summon the Huns to descend upon me from on high?”

Five chewed on the practical implications of the conversation. “Klaus, how did you know to summon Ben? To make him corporeal?”

“Uh, I’m not precisely sure how I did that,” Klaus admitted. “The first time, I was fucking terrified, and it just kind of...happened. But I’ve made – had made a lot of progress with Ben since then.” He looked happy for a moment before his face fell.

Despite his sympathy for Klaus, Five decided to continue before there were any more interruptions. “Vanya, you had control that I had never seen before – you had _precision,_ in addition to power. I think you stopped a tank shell.”

Vanya looked up, a small bemused smile on her face. “Oh wow. That’s…intense. And yeah, I’ve been noticing that I can control my powers better. With Harlan, both the first time and then in the barn. And then when I used my powers on you the other day, Five, it really was –“

Five’s head whipped around so fast it was nearly audible. _“You. What?”_

Vanya turned to look at Five, confusion and a hint of fear in her face. “When I used my powers. To help you –” 

Five’s mouth fell open and he blinked in confusion and outrage. “Vanya, you...you…” he trailed off, even in rage not able to insult his once-favorite sister. But he couldn’t stop his eyes from showing the _betrayal_ that he felt. “You used your _powers_ on me? 

_Five, she meant well -_ Dolores began but Five shut her out. He didn’t need to - didn’t _want_ to hear her making excuses for idiotic behavior. 

Five was absolutely _livid._ God, he had fucked up by not checking on Vanya more in 1963. She was so _dangerous_. She had destroyed the world - twice. And she still had no training. No control. Of her powers, or apparently her impulses as well. 

Rage, pure rage poured out from the box that contained Five’s emotions. “Vanya, you could have… you could have _killed_ me!” 

Vanya took a step forward, not quite timid, but not confrontational. She reached an open hand towards her smallest brother. “Five I didn’t know what else to - you were -" she shook her head. "Five we thought you were _dying.”_

“Well, I _wasn’t_.” Five retorted, though he had very little clue to the level of truth in that statement. He began pacing as a way to burn off the adrenaline-fueled energy that was again pounding through his system. “But no thanks to you, apparently. Jesus, I can't leave any of you alone for a second. What if you had _killed_ me Vanya? Who’s going to figure out Reginald’s plan then? Who’s going to get you all home?”

“Damn, Five, give her a break,” Diego responded, moving closer to Vanya as if to shield her from Five’s vitriol. “She’s right. You looked like _absolute_ shit. And no one - no one had a clue what was wrong with you. You were just... laying there. Like you were already dead.”

“Yeah, well, _someone_ had to save your sorry ass, Diego.” Five bit back, pure venom dripping into his biting words. He was grasping for control blindly, fighting the combination of rage and panic that overwhelmed his body. 

It was a losing battle.

Distantly, Five heard his voice dripping with contempt. “I would have been _fine._ I’ve been fine on my own all of these years without you. Don’t you understand? You need _me_ , but _I_ don’t need you _. I don’t need_ any _of you.”_

“Five!” Luther’s voice betrayed his shock at the words.

“Boys!” Allison’s tone was motherly as she tried to deflect the inferno in front of her. “Enough of this.”

“No, no I don’t think it is _enough,_ Allison,” Five whirled around to his sister. “Vanya tried to _kill_ you when she found out you used your powers on her. And the stakes weren’t _nearly_ so high. But am I doing anything to her? No. I'm…" Five shook his head, trailing off in disgust.

“Five –“ Klaus began. “Five, don’t…”

“Vanya, you really thought that was a good idea? And you didn’t even talk to any of us? What if Five died? What then?" Luther was the first to pick a side, but the others soon followed suit, with Luther and Klaus flanking Five near the couch. Meanwhile, Diego and Allison had stepped in front of a retreating Vanya. 

“Five, Five I’m sorry…” Vanya was crying now, still reaching out towards her brother from behind the protective shield of Numbers Two and Three. “I’m so - I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just... I just wanted to help.”

“Well, _next time_ you want to help, maybe stop and think. Every time you’ve used your powers it’s caused a mess. A mess that _I_ have had to clean up.” Five barely heard his own words, his ears filled with the deafening sound of his own heartbeat as he continued to fight for a measure of control over his reactions.

“Five, you’re not the only one -” Diego yelled but was interrupted by Klaus. 

“Hey, come on, stop attacking him, Diego. He almost _died_ to save you.”

The argument continued.

“Stop beating up on Vanya.” 

“We need to _work together.”_

“Exactly. We need to be a team,” Diego said. “Team Zero. We’re all in. _You_ need to get on board, Five.”

That was the last straw, and any hold that Five still had on his emotions shattered. “Are you... are you fucking kidding me Diego? You are going to lecture _me_ about being a team? Five blinked, looking around at his siblings incredulously. “Team Zero, Umbrella Academy, _whatever._ Who cares? The point is that you - all of you - have got to start _listening_ to me. This “team” thing only works if we are working towards the same goal. And the goal right now needs to be _getting us home._ Not running off on side quests like last time.”

Five's words had the unintended but predictable effect of dividing his siblings even further.

"We’re not running off on _side quests,_ Five” Allison was the first to voice her offense.

“You literally got married. That’s not a side quest?” Luther asked. “What do you think your daughter would say about that?”

Allison’s control broke and her face darkened. “How dare you? How _dare_ you bring Claire into this? You... you want to talk about side quests?" She gestured wildly at Klaus. "He started a freaking _cult!_ ”

“Guys, stop, please” Vanya implored, her face streaked red with tears.

“You did the same thing, Vanya. Going off and playing _farm frau._ ” Luther pointed out, and Vanya turned towards him, cold fire replacing the sadness in her eyes.

"Don't bring Sissy into this!” Vanya spoke slowly, but her words carried an unspoken threat.

“You think you’re so perfect.”

“- can’t believe you -”

“-when will you ever -”

“- at least I didn’t-”

Five stopped listening. As quickly as it had ignited, his anger had turned to a cold ember in his chest. He merely watched as his family devolved into a bitter five-way confrontation. 

He screwed up his face in exasperation. Nothing _ever_ went right in this family. For the first time, Five wondered if maybe Dad was right. Maybe the Umbrella Academy was fundamentally flawed. They had been here less than three days. And in such a short time first Diego and then Vanya had come so close to ruining _everything._

The memory of Vanya’s hands in his hair, comforting only a short time ago, now repulsed Five. _What if she had killed him?_ The idea rattled through his brain, threatening Five’s desperate grip on sanity.

He might as well have given up when he was thirteen and spared himself decades of pain. 

_Fix Vanya, Fix Vanya, Fix Vanya -_ the words rung in his head like a bell over and over again. Even if she didn’t destroy the world, Vanya still had the power to ruin _everything._ And Five was always one step behind. One step from failure. A heartbeat away from ruination.

And no one was able to put aside their petty differences long enough to help him.

In a room surrounded by his siblings, Five once again felt entirely alone. 

\---

Rather than use his powers, Five simply stood up, turned on his heel and walked out of the room. No one seemed to note his departure, each of his siblings too enraged, too engaged in the fight. As he walked up the stairs, the shouting became no more than a muffled roar. Five reached his room and sat down on the bed, his body collapsing heavily onto the mattress. Exhaustion flowed into his body, swirling around the frosty rage that still burned in his core.

 _So are you going to lecture me about picking a fight with Vanya?_ He might as well find out what side Dolores was on. 

He heard the hesitation in Dolores’ voice as she picked her words carefully. _You know you would have done the same for her, Five._

 _That’s different._ Five tried to make himself believe the words as he said them, rubbing his neck with the back of his hand.

_Is it?_

_Yes. No. I don’t know._ He put his head in his hands. It had all been pointless. Useless. _He_ was useless. Because on top of everything, he _still_ had no idea how to get his family home. 

\---

After an immeasurable amount of time lost in his own thoughts, Five's attention was drawn to a small object on the windowsill.

Strange. He hadn’t noticed that earlier. He walked over to the window and opened it. On the windowsill was a small folded piece of paper, held down by a small rock. He took the paper and replaced the rock on the sill. Walking back over to the bed, he unfolded the heavy card stock.

It was an invitation. 

_\---_

_“Number Five._

_Now that you have finished convalescing, I’ll expect you for dinner tomorrow night._

_Don’t bother bringing the others._

_-Sir Reginald Hargreeves.”_

\---

Sinking down slowly onto the bed, Five felt his blood curdle at the ominous words. 

Despite his earlier comment to Luther, the idea of meeting with the man who he had shared a drink with a week and several decades ago filled him with cold dread. The man who wasn’t their father. Who had _stared_ at Five with ice in his eyes.

Still, Reginald might hold some clue that could help get his family home. And Five couldn’t pass up on that opportunity. No matter the cost. 

Number Five Hargreeves would accept the invitation. 

And Sir Reginald Hargreeves knew it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand thats a wrap....for part 1. Part 2, we'll get back to Reggie and the Sparrows, and find out if these kids ever make it home.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to everybody who read this far. I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing, and thank you to all of you that gave me input and comments and all kinds of support. 
> 
> It's been a WILD ride.
> 
> <3<3<3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/clementineofmine). Come talk to me.


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